Category: Children’s rights

  • On March 13, 2025, ADHRB delivered an intervention at the 58th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council during the Annual Discussion on the Rights of the Child. ADHRB expressed deep concern over Bahrain’s blatant violations of minors’ rights in detention, which contravene the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

    We express deep concern over Bahrain’s blatant violations of minors’ rights in detention, which contravene the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

    Minors in Bahrain are arrested without warrants on political charges, interrogated without legal counsel, and forcibly disappeared from their families for extended periods. Many are tortured to coerce confessions used against them in court. They are also denied education and forced to miss school years, jeopardizing their future.

    One example is Ali Husain Matrook Abdulla, a 15-year-old school student arrested without a warrant on 26 August 2024 for participating in peaceful protests. He was forcibly disappeared and tortured to extract a confession. After five months in pre-trial detention, he was sentenced in early 2025 to two years in prison while awaiting trial for other cases. He faces medical neglect for his dental issues and is deprived of his right to education, as authorities refuse to let him continue his studies.

    We urge the Council to take immediate action to pressure Bahrain to uphold detained children’s rights and comply with the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

    The post ADHRB at HRC58 Condemns Bahrain’s Grave Violations Against Detained Children appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

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  • Yousif Fadhel AlTooq was a 15-year-old minor and school student when Bahraini authorities arrested him without a warrant on 8 August 2024 after summoning him to the Sitra Police Station. During his detention, he has endured torture, denial of family visits, denial of access to legal counsel, deprivation of his right to education, withholding of drinking water and adequate winter clothing, as well as limited phone communication with his family. He has been held in the Juvenile section of the Dry Dock Detention Center for five months, awaiting trial.

    On 8 August 2024, Yousif and his family received a phone call from the Sitra Police Station summoning him for questioning without providing any reason. His parents drove him there after assurances that he would be released immediately following the interrogation. Upon arrival, Yousif was transferred from the Sitra Police Station to the Qudaibiya Police Station. Although his family followed him, they were denied access to visit him. 

    At the Qudaibiya Police Station, officers interrogated and tortured Yousif without legal representation or the presence of a guardian, despite his status as a minor. While subjected to psychological pressure, threats, and various forms of torture, Yousif refrained from sharing details with his family to spare their feelings. Despite the abuse and the fear he endured, Yousif did not confess to the charges against him. His case relies solely on forced false verbal confessions extracted from friends who were arrested with him in connection to political cases, and no evidence has been presented to support the charges. The next day, he was brought before the Public Prosecution Office (PPO), again without a lawyer or guardian present. Throughout the interrogation and his appearance at the PPO, Yousif was denied legal counsel, as his family lacked the financial resources to appoint a lawyer, and the PPO failed to provide one. Following his appearance at the PPO, Yousif spent one night at the Nabih Saleh Police Station before being transferred to the Juvenile section of the Dry Dock Detention Center, where he remains detained. Two days later, he was briefly allowed to contact his family, informing them of a one-week detention in the Juvenile section of the Dry Dock Detention Center.

    Yousif was denied legal counsel during his interrogation and continues to be denied legal representation during his pre-trial detention. His family lacks the financial means to appoint a lawyer, and the PPO has failed to provide one. The PPO has repeatedly extended his detention before referring him to trial, relying solely on forced false verbal confessions extracted from friends arrested alongside him in connection to political cases, which are being used as evidence against him. Yousif is currently awaiting his repeatedly postponed trial. While the investigator has leveled various charges against others in his group, Yousif’s specific charges remain unclear. The charges known so far are 1) burning tires, 2) acts of vandalism, and 3) attacking the Sitra Police Station. 

    Since his arrest, Bahraini authorities have barred Yousif’s family from visiting him at the Dry Dock Detention Center. He has only been able to make two video calls with his family since his arrest, with the costs deducted from their account. His sole means of communication is through voice calls, which allow him to contact his family two to three times a week, each lasting 10 minutes. Yousif’s family has also reported periods of disconnection, sometimes extending for an entire week, as part of collective punishment imposed on detainees. Moreover, Yousif has at times been denied drinking water and, in the current cold weather, lacks adequate clothing to stay warm.

    Yousif’s detention has caused him to miss an entire school year, as the Dry Dock Detention Center administration has deprived him of his right to education during his detention. As a second-year secondary school student specializing in an industrial major, Yousif needs to complete practical courses to progress academically. Furthermore, his detention facility lacks recreational, vocational, or educational programs to support his development.

    Yousif’s parents have submitted several complaints to the Ombudsman and the National Institution for Human Rights (NIHR) requesting his release and the resumption of his education. Although a representative from one of these institutions met with Yousif and acknowledged his urgent need to return to school, no actions have been taken. The complaints have been closed, and Yousif has lost his entire academic year.

    Yousif’s warrantless arrest as a minor, torture, denial of legal counsel and family visits, restricted family phone contact, deprivation of his right to education, withholding of drinking water and adequate winter clothing, and prolonged arbitrary pre-trial detention constitute clear violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, also know as the Nelson Mandela Rules, to which Bahrain is a party.

    Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls upon Bahraini authorities to fulfill their human rights obligations by immediately and unconditionally releasing Yousif. ADHRB further urges the Bahraini government to investigate allegations of arbitrary arrest, torture, denial of legal counsel and family visits, restricted family phone contact, deprivation of education, and withholding of drinking water and adequate winter clothing, and to hold the perpetrators accountable. ADHRB also demands compensation for the violations Yousif has suffered in detention. At the very least, ADHRB advocates for a prompt, fair trial for Yousif under the Bahraini Restorative Justice Law for Children, and in accordance with international legal standards, leading to his release. Furthermore, ADHRB calls on Bahraini authorities to allow family visits for Yousif, provide him with adequate winter clothing, allow him to resume his education, and offer the necessary support to enable him to complete his studies.

    The post Profile in Persecution: Yousif Fadhel AlTooq appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

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  • Ali Husain Matrook Abdulla was a 15-year-old minor and school student when Bahraini authorities arrested him on 26 August 2024 in Karranah while spending time with friends. The arrest was carried out without a warrant. During his detention, he endured torture, denial of family visits, denial of access to his lawyer, deprivation of his right to education, and medical neglect. He has been held at the Dry Dock Detention Center for five months without trial, as Bahraini authorities repeatedly delay and continue to postpone his hearings.

    On the evening of 26 August 2024, Ali was with his friends in the village of Karranah when plainclothes officers and officers from the Ministry of Interior (MOI) arrested him without presenting an arrest warrant. During the arrest, an officer slapped him on the face. The officers then transferred him to Budaiya Police Station before sending him for medical examinations. Unaware of Ali’s arrest, his parents attempted to contact him, but their calls went unanswered. They later learned of his detention from witnesses who saw him being apprehended and taken to Budaiya Police Station. When his family inquired at the station, officers at the police station denied he was being held there. In reality, Ali was not at the station at the time, as he had been sent for a medical examination, a detail the officers failed to disclose. Ten hours later, the station called to inform the family that Ali was there and requested they send him clothes and shoes. Ten minutes later, Ali called his family, informing them he was being transferred to Roundabout 17 Police Station and asked for the clothes to be sent there instead.

    On 27 August 2024, the day after Ali’s arrest, at approximately 8:30 A.M., Ali’s mother visited Budaiya Police Station to inquire about him and requested to see him, unaware that he had already been transferred for interrogation at Roundabout 17 Police Station. Officers informed her that he was charged with arson and possession of Molotov cocktails but stated that Ali was no longer at the station and had been transferred for interrogation without disclosing his destination.

     

    During interrogation at Roundabout 17 Police Station, officers slapped Ali in the face and subjected him to psychological torture to force a confession. One officer threatened him, saying, “If you don’t talk and confess, I’ll beat you with this stick or bring something else from outside.” Fearing further abuse, Ali falsely confessed. His lawyer was not allowed to be present during the interrogation. The following day, 28 August 2024, Ali was brought before the Public Prosecution Office (PPO). Although his lawyer was present, he was only allowed to exchange greetings with Ali and was not permitted to consult with him. Consequently, the Juvenile and Family Prosecution decided to detain him for one week pending investigation. Following this, Ali was transferred to the Dry Dock Detention Center.

    On 4 September 2024, Ali appeared before the Juvenile and Family Prosecution for the second time, where his detention was extended for another two weeks pending investigation, based on his coerced confessions obtained under threats and torture. This pattern of extending his detention every two weeks continued after each appearance before the Prosecution, relying on the same coerced confessions, until his referral to trial on 19 December 2024. During these sessions, Ali’s lawyer was consistently prohibited from attending. As of 6 January 2025, it was revealed that Ali faced charges in two separate arson cases. On 8 January 2025, he discovered a third arson charge against him, related to an arson incident in Karranah on 24 August 2024, which had been referred to the High Criminal Court.

    Ali was not brought before a judge within 24 hours of his arrest, does not have adequate time and facilities to prepare for trial, is unable to present or challenge evidence, and is denied access to his attorney. As a result, his mother serves as an intermediary, communicating with the lawyer and relaying the information to her son through phone calls. On 19 December 2024, after nearly four months of arbitrary pre-trial detention, Ali and several of his peers were referred to trial, with the first court session initially scheduled for 23 December 2024. However, the session was later postponed to 30 December 2024. He remains detained at Dry Dock Detention Center, awaiting trial, as his court sessions continue to be postponed. 

    Ali has been subjected to medical neglect while in detention. Before his arrest, he was receiving dental treatment at a private clinic, but his detention prevented him from completing the treatment. As a result, his front teeth remained exposed after nerve extraction and gum surgery, causing him frequent, severe pain. Initially, authorities denied him medical care and even refused to provide painkillers. After a complaint was filed with the Ombudsman, treatment resumed, with one tooth being treated and a promise to continue treatment on one tooth per week. However, this treatment was later discontinued, and his care was limited to pain relief medication. Ali experienced three consecutive fainting episodes due to severe pain. Additionally, comprehensive medical examinations revealed low blood pressure, but neither he nor his family were provided with detailed results.

    Ali, a first-year high school student, has been deprived of his education while in detention. The Ministry of Education refused to allow him to take exams or continue his studies. His mother was summoned to the ministry and presented with two options: either withdraw Ali from school or accept a certificate marked “Deprived” with a zero average. The Ministry of Education justified this by stating that Ali had not attended any school days due to his detention.

    Since his arrest, Ali’s family has been denied visits with him in detention. They submitted multiple complaints to both the Ombudsman and the National Institute for Human Rights (NIHR) regarding mistreatment, denial of medical care, and the deprivation of his right to education. However, most of these complaints have yielded no results.

    Ali’s warrantless arrest as a minor, torture, denial of family visits and lawyer access, deprivation of his right to education, medical neglect, and prolonged arbitrary pre-trial detention are clear violations of the Convention Against Torture (CAT), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), all of which Bahrain is a party to.

    Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls upon Bahraini authorities to fulfill their human rights obligations by immediately and unconditionally releasing Ali. It calls on the Bahraini government to investigate allegations of arbitrary arrest, torture, coerced confessions, denial of family visits and lawyer access, deprivation of the right to education, and medical neglect, and to hold the perpetrators accountable. ADHRB also demands compensation for the violations Ali has suffered in detention. At the very least, ADHRB advocates for a prompt, fair trial for Ali under the Bahraini Restorative Justice Law for Children, and in accordance with international legal standards, leading to his release. Furthermore, ADHRB calls on the Dry Dock Detention Center administration to provide Ali with immediate, appropriate medical care, including the completion of his dental treatment, holding it responsible for any further deterioration in his health. It also demands that the center allow Ali to resume his education and permit family visits without delay.

    The post Profile in Persecution: Ali Husain Matrook Abdulla appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

  • Official attitudes are hardening towards the minority group amid an anti-Muslim crackdown, say activists

    For Rohingya refugee Hussain Ahmed, the hope that his children might receive a formal education to secure a better adulthood than his own was what “kept him going”. After fleeing to India from Myanmar in 2016, he began working as a construction worker in a country where he is not allowed to seek legal employment. Then he met with a new hurdle.

    “For the last few years, I have been running from pillar to post, trying to get a local government-run school to enrol my 10-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter. I cannot afford the fees of privately run schools, so the government ones were my only hope. But all of them turned my children down,” says Ahmed, who lives in the Khajuri Khas area of Delhi with his wife and four children.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • By Sainimili Magimagi in Suva

    Family members keep silent on the issue of violence in Fiji and individuals continue to be the victims, according to Jonathan Veitch, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) representative to the South Pacific.

    While raising his concern on the issue at Nasinu Gospel Primary School on Friday, he said 83 percent of children in Fiji had reported some level of violence, either in their family or in school over the past six months.

    “This 83 percent rate is far too high, and it’s not acceptable,” he said.

    “The problem is that when the violence is happening, there’s kind of a curtain of silence.”

    Visiting UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell said although legal processes should be ensured, it was also important to acknowledge the rehabilitation process for the victim to deal with the trauma.

    Speaking during a student-led press conference at Nasinu Gospel Primary School, Veitch expressed his concern about the alarming rate of violence against women and children in Fiji, whether physical or sexual.

    “You (Fiji) do have high rates of violence against children,” Veitch said.

    “This (83 percent rate) is far too high, and it’s not acceptable.

    ‘Curtain of silence’
    “The problem is that when the violence is happening, there’s kind of a curtain of silence.”

    He said it was common in Fiji for family members to keep silent on the issue of violence while individuals continued to be victimised.

    “If that particular person has to be stopped, we have to deal with it in our village.

    “So, it’s not just UNICEF and the Government; it’s also the village itself.”

    Veitch said significant pillars of communities must be involved in key conversations.

    “We really need to talk about it in our churches on Sundays; we have to have an honest conversation about it.

    “These kids shouldn’t be hurt; they shouldn’t be punished physically.”

    Multifaceted approach
    He said the issue should be dealt with through a multifaceted approach.

    Visiting UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell expressed similar concerns and called for a change in norms.

    “It requires government leadership and good laws,” she said.

    “It requires the government to come together and say that this is a priority where violence against children is unacceptable.”

    She said conversations regarding the matter needed to focus on changing the norms of what was acceptable and unacceptable in a community.

    “A lot of times this issue is kept in the dark and not talked about, and I think it’s very important to have those conversations.”

    She said although legal processes should be ensured, it was also important to acknowledge the rehabilitation process for the victims to deal with the trauma.

    She added that society played a role in condemning violence against women and ensuring they were safe in their homes and in their communities.

    Russell said while most cases were directed at men, there was a need to train the mindset of young boys to change their perspective of using violence as a solving mechanism.

    Sainimili Magimagi is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Ali Mahmood Mahmood (AlKahraba’ii) was a 15-year-old Bahraini school student and minor when Bahraini authorities arrested him from his grandfather’s house on 16 January 2019 without presenting an arrest warrant. During detention, he endured torture, enforced disappearance, denial of access to legal counsel, unfair trial based on confessions extracted under torture, and sectarian-based insults. Ali was sentenced to 10 years in prison, of which he served five years before being released on 8 April 2024, under a royal pardon that included 1,584 convicts.

    On 16 January 2019, riot police, commandos, and special forces raided the home of Ali’s grandfather in Duraz, where he was staying. The officers entered the house from above and arrested him without providing any arrest warrant or reason for his arrest. Ali’s arrest occurred on a cold day while he was wearing light clothes, and officers refused to provide him with warmer clothing. Subsequently, they transferred him to the Criminal Investigation Directorate (CID) Building, where he managed to call his family for no more than a minute, informing them of his location. After that, his news was cut off and he forcibly disappeared until he was transferred to the New Dry Dock Prison on 6 February 2019. 

    Ali was previously summoned to appear before the Hamad Town Center in 2018 when he was 14 years old; however, he was not arrested at that time.

    At the CID, Ali was interrogated without the presence of a lawyer or guardian for 20 days. CID officers stripped him of his clothes, beat him on his face, forced him to stand for extended periods, poured cold water on him while the weather was cold, and then transferred him to an extremely cold air-conditioned room. Furthermore, they insulted his parents and his Shia religious sect. Subsequently, he confessed to the fabricated charges brought against him under torture.

    Ali was not presented to the Public Prosecution Office (PPO). Instead, he was transferred to Jau Prison, where he met with the PPO’s representative who forced him to sign papers without knowing their content. On 6 February 2019, he was transferred to the New Dry Dock Prison, where he was able to call his family for the first time since his enforced disappearance when he was at the CID.

    Ali was not brought before a judge within 48 hours after arrest, was not given adequate time and facilities to prepare for his trial (which started six months after his arrest), and was unable to present evidence or challenge the evidence presented against him. Furthermore, the court utilized the confessions extracted from him under torture as evidence against him in his trial.

    On 28 January 2020, Ali was sentenced to 10 years in prison and a fine of 100,000 dinars. He was convicted of 1) training on explosive materials, 2) attempted explosion, 3) possession of weapons, 4) manufacture of explosives, and 5) conspiring with external entities. The court of appeal, as well as the court of cassation, upheld the sentence.

    On 22 March 2024, Ali joined a hunger strike in solidarity with his fellow inmate, Mohamed Hasan Radhi, who was transferred to isolation. In a voice recording spread on social media, Ali held concerned authorities responsible for the deterioration of his inmate’s psychological condition.

    On 8 April 2024, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain issued a royal decree pardoning 1,584 convicts on the occasion of the silver jubilee of his accession to the throne, coinciding with Eid al-Fitr, with Ali among them. He was released on the same day.

    Ali’s warrantless arrest, torture, enforced disappearance, denial of attorney access, unfair trial, and religious discrimination constitute violations of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), to which Bahrain is a party. Furthermore, the violations he endured as a minor contravene the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to which Bahrain is also a party.

    As such, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls upon the Bahraini authorities to investigate the allegations of Ali’s arbitrary arrest as a minor, torture, enforced disappearance, religious discrimination, and denial of attorney access during interrogations, and to hold the perpetrators accountable. Additionally, ADHRB urges the Bahraini government to end the isolation of all political prisoners, holding the government responsible for the deterioration of the psychological conditions of the isolated detainees. While ADHRB welcomes the issued royal pardon, which included several political prisoners, it considers this belated step insufficient unless investigations into the violations suffered by these released individuals are conducted, compensation is provided, perpetrators are held accountable, and political arrests and prison violations cease.

    The post Profile in Persecution: Ali Mahmood Mahmood (AlKahraba’ii) appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

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  • Twin brothers Ahmed and Mahmood Mohamed Habib were 17-year-old minor students when Bahraini authorities arrested them along with some of their friends on 1 July 2015 while they were eating Suhoor during the month of Ramadan. During their detention, they were subjected to enforced disappearance, torture, sexual harassment, sectarian-based insults, and unfair trials based on confessions extracted under torture. Ahmed was sentenced to 40 years in prison, and Mahmood was sentenced to 47 years and six months in prison on politically motivated charges before being released on 8 April 2024, under a royal pardon that included 1584 convicts.

     

    On 1 July 2015, at 3:00 A.M., military and civilian vehicles, with helicopter support, surrounded the house in the Wadyan area, where Ahmed and Mahmood were eating suhoor during the month of Ramadan with their friends. Riot police officers from the Ministry of Interior (MOI) and two plainclothes officers raided the house and arrested the twins and the young men who were accompanying them: Ali Hasan Ashoor, Ali Jaafar AlAmr, Ahmed Hasan AlAnsara, and Ahmed Yasser Ahmed. The officers did not present any arrest warrant, nor provide a reason for the arrest. Subsequently, they transferred them to the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) building.

     

    After their arrest, Ahmed and Mahmood were forcibly disappeared for two days. Their family didn’t know about the arrest until after it was spread on social media platforms, and they heard the news from other people. On 3 July 2015, two days after the arrest, the twins called the family and informed them that they were at the CID building.

     

    At the CID, officers interrogated and tortured Ahmed and Mahmood. They severely beat them, took photos and videos of them while they were naked, and didn’t allow them to pray. Furthermore, they beat them whenever they tried to go to the bathroom and forced them to sign fabricated confessions to some of the charges brought against them. The interrogations lasted for about two weeks and were conducted without the presence of a lawyer. Subsequently, they were transferred to the Public Prosecutor’s Office (PPO) on 4 July 2015, and on 8 July 2015, they were transferred to the Dry Dock Prison. On 11 July 2015, 11 days after the arrest, Ahmed and Mahmood’s parents were able to visit them for the first time since the arrest in the Dry Dock Prison.

     

    Ahmed and Mahmood were not brought promptly before a judge, did not have adequate time and facilities to prepare for their trials, weren’t able to present evidence and challenge evidence presented against them, and were denied access to their lawyer. Furthermore, their confessions extracted under torture were used against them as evidence in their trials.

     

    The court convicted Ahmed between 29 October 2015 and 31 March 2020 in cases related to 1) gathering and rioting, 2) manufacturing usable or explosive devices, 3) negligent destruction, 4) using force and violence against a public official, 5) arson, 6) endangering people’s lives or safety, 7) violating the conditions of getting a license to import explosives, 8) using explosives to endanger the funds of others, 9) importing or possessing explosives, guns or pistols, and 10) explosion or attempted explosion. He was sentenced to a total of more than 50 years in prison. Ahmed appealed some of the rulings, however, the Court of Appeal rejected some of the appeals and upheld the verdicts. On the other hand, it accepted the rest of the appeals and reduced the sentences. After the appeals, the total sentence became 40 years in prison.

     

    Mahmood was convicted between 23 April 2013 and 29 October 2018 in cases related to 1) gathering and rioting, 2) breaching the prestige of the court, 3) manufacturing usable or explosive devices, 4) negligent destruction, 5) using force and violence against a public official, 6) arson, 7) endangering people’s lives or safety, 8) violating the conditions of getting a license to import explosives, 9) using explosives to endanger the funds of others, 10) importing or possessing explosives, guns or pistols, and 11) explosion or attempted explosion. He was sentenced to more than 59 years and six months in prison. Mahmood appealed some of the rulings, however, the Court of Appeal rejected some of the appeals and upheld the verdicts. On the other hand, it accepted the rest of the appeals and reduced the sentences. After the appeals, the total sentence was reduced to 47 years and six months in prison.

     

    While serving their sentences in Jau Prison, Ahmed and Mahmood were deprived of prayer and insulted based on their Shia religious sect.

     

    On 8 April 2024, King Hamad bin Isa AlKhalifa of Bahrain issued a royal decree pardoning 1584 convicts on the occasion of the silver jubilee of his accession to the throne, coinciding with Eid al-Fitr, with Ahmed and Mahmood among them. Ahmed and Mahmood were released on the same day.

    Ahmed and Mahmood’s warrantless arrest, torture, denial of attorney access, unfair trials, sectarian-based insults, and sexual harassment constitute violations of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), to which Bahrain is a party. Furthermore, the violations they endured as minors contravene the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to which Bahrain is also a party.

     

    As such, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls on the Bahraini authorities to investigate allegations of arbitrary arrest, torture, sexual assault, denial of legal counsel, and sectarian discrimination, provide compensation for Ahmed and Mahmood, and hold the perpetrators accountable. While ADHRB welcomes the royal pardon issued, which included several political prisoners, it considers this belated step incomplete if the Bahraini government does not investigate the violations endured by these released individuals and compensate them. This step would also be considered incomplete if the perpetrators are not held accountable and political arrests and violations within prisons are not stopped.

    The post Profiles in Persecution: Ahmed and Mahmood Mohamed Habib appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

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  • Husain Mohamed Falah was a 17-year-old Bahraini minor and high school student when Bahraini authorities arrested him from his home on 15 December 2014 without presenting any arrest warrant. During his detention, he endured torture, sexual harassment, denial of attorney access during interrogation and trial, and an unfair trial. He is currently serving a life sentence in Jau Prison, facing religious discrimination, medical neglect, and being denied his rights to education and communication with his family.

    On 15 December 2014, at 4:00 A.M., plainclothes officers arrived with a 16-passenger bus, an armored vehicle, and more than 10 Jeep cars, and conducted a forceful raid at Husain’s family house where they were sleeping. They broke the doors of the house and the garage, confiscated his identification card along with his phone, and took him on the bus to the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) building without providing any arrest warrant or reason behind his arrest. En route to the CID building, officers blindfolded Husain inside the bus and hit him on the head. On the same day at 6:00 A.M., Husain’s parents received a 4-second call from him, stating that he was in the CID building. Two days later, at 4:00 A.M., officers returned to Husain’s home, raided it, and filmed the raid with two cameras without submitting a search warrant They searched Husain’s room, focusing on his personal belongings. They confiscated an old phone he had that did not have a SIM card and was not working. On 19 December 2014, Husain was brought blindfolded near his home, to a location where Bahraini authorities claimed he participated in “rioting and the killing of a police corporal”.

    At the CID building, Husain was interrogated for a week without the presence of a lawyer. CID officers tortured him by completely blindfolding him, stripping him of his clothes, forcing him to stand for extended periods with his hands cuffed, pouring hot water on him, and spitting on his face. Officers also subjected Husain to electric shocks, sexual harassment, and verbal abuse, and prevented him from contacting his parents. Subsequently, he confessed to the fabricated charges brought against him under torture.

    Following his interrogation, Husain was brought on 22 December 2014 before the Public Prosecution Office (PPO), which subsequently ordered his detention for two months, and his lawyer was not allowed to attend. He was then transferred to the Dry Dock Detention Center, where he endured further torture. On 24 December 2014, Husain’s family was able to visit him for the first time since his arrest.

    Husain was not brought before a judge within 48 hours after arrest, was not given adequate time and facilities to prepare for his trial, was denied access to his attorney before and during the court sessions, and was unable to present evidence or challenge the evidence presented against him. Furthermore, the court utilized the confessions extracted from him under torture as evidence against him in his trial. On 30 December 2015, Husain was sentenced to life imprisonment and deprivation of his Bahraini nationality after being convicted in a mass trial with 22 other defendants for 1) joining a terrorist cell to kill a police corporal on 8 December 2014, and 2) carrying out riots on 9 December 2014. Although Husain was transferred to the courtroom for the sentencing hearing, he was not allowed to enter and was forced to wait outside. Then the lawyer came out and informed the family of the judgment. His citizenship was reinstated on 27 April 2019, through a royal pardon. Husain appealed his sentence, and on 22 December 2016, the Court of Appeal rejected his appeal and upheld the initial verdict. Consequently, the Court of Cassation upheld the sentence on 5 June 2017.

    Husain is currently serving his sentence in Jau Prison, enduring discriminatory treatment based on his belonging to the Shia religious sect and facing threats and deprivation of his rights by the prison officers from time to time on the pretext of taking revenge for the alleged murder of a policeman. In addition, he’s currently deprived of calling his family, experiencing issues within his eye retina that are getting worse as a result of medical negligence, and is denied his right to continue his university education. Husain’s family filed complaints to the Ombudsman, documenting the raid, torture, and eye conditions. The Ombudsman received these complaints and visited Husain with no result obtained.  This mistreatment and medical neglect prompted Husain to go on hunger strikes every now and then to protest against the prison’s poor status and the violations to which he was subjected.

    Husain’s warrantless arrest, torture, sexual assault, denial of access to legal counsel during interrogations and trial, unfair trial, deprivation of his rights to education and communication, discriminatory treatment based on his belonging to the Shia sect, and medical negligence represent clear violations of the Convention against Torture and Other Degrading and Inhuman Treatment (CAT), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Furthermore, the violations he endured as a minor contravene the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to which Bahrain is also a party.

    As such, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls upon the Bahraini authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Husain. ADHRB also urges the Bahraini government to investigate the allegations of Husain’s arbitrary arrest as a minor, torture, denial of attorney access during interrogations and trial, deprivation of his rights to education and communication, discriminatory treatment based on his belonging to the Shia sect, and medical neglect while holding the perpetrators accountable. At the very least, ADHRB calls for a fair retrial for him under the Restorative Justice Law for Children, leading to his release. Additionally, it urges the Jau Prison administration to promptly provide appropriate healthcare for Husain, holding it responsible for any possible deterioration in his health. Finally, ADHRB calls on the Jau Prison administration to immediately grant Husain his right to regularly call his family and allow him to continue his university studies.

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  • Muntadher Fawzi Salman was a 17-year-old Bahraini high school student when Bahraini authorities arbitrarily arrested him from his home on 22 December 2016 without presenting an arrest warrant. During detention, he endured torture, enforced disappearance, denial of access to legal counsel during interrogations, unfair trials, and medical neglect. He is currently serving a nearly 80-year prison sentence in Jau Prison.

    On 22 December 2016, riot police, commandos, and plainclothes officers raided the home of Muntadher’s friend in Bani Jamra, where Muntadher was residing, at night while they were sleeping. They beat him and apprehended him without presenting any arrest warrant. Subsequently, they transferred him to the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) Building, where his news was cut for a day. He managed to contact his family the following day, informing them that he was at the CID Building. The family received another call from him on the same day, informing them that he was at the Roundabout 17 Police Station.

    Before his arrest, Muntadher was pursued by Bahraini authorities for a year and a half, and his family received several summonses for him. Additionally, he had received a 3-year prison sentence in absentia for allegedly burning a Jeep.

    During Muntadher’s interrogation, he was transferred multiple times between the CID Building and the Roundabout 17 Police Station. On 24 December 2016, he once again forcibly disappeared for 14 days, leaving his family unaware of his whereabouts. CID officers and Roundabout 17 Police Station officers tortured Muntadher. They beat him in sensitive areas and on his face and ears. Additionally, they forced him to stand for long hours with his hands tied behind his back and compelled him to sleep in extremely cold cells. They also insulted and threatened him, and denied him access to a lawyer. Due to the torture inflicted upon him, Muntadher developed severe ear pain that persisted for two years. Following this torture, he was coerced into signing confession papers without being aware of their content. 

    On 5 January 2017, Muntadher was transferred to the Dry Dock Detention Center. On 11 January 2017, twenty days after his arrest, his family was allowed to visit him for the first time at the Dry Dock Detention Center. 

    Muntadher was not brought before a judge within 48 hours after arrest, was not given adequate time and facilities to prepare for his trials, and was unable to present evidence or challenge the evidence presented against him. Furthermore, the confessions extracted from him under torture were utilized as evidence in his trials. 

    On 16 June 2016, Muntadher was sentenced in absentia to three years in prison as part of a mass trial involving 43 defendants. The charges against him included 1) gathering and rioting, 2) manufacturing explosive devices, 3) arson, 4) negligent destruction, and 5) attempted murder. On 21 May 2018, the court imposed an additional three-year prison sentence on him, along with the revocation of his citizenship. Subsequently, his citizenship was reinstated through a royal pardon. Muntadher later received additional verdicts, bringing the total of his sentence to nearly 80 years. However, the dates, charges, and details of these subsequent verdicts remain unknown.

    Currently held in Jau Prison, Muntadher is subjected to insults by officers and denied proper treatment for stomach problems he has.  His family filed a complaint with the Ombudsman regarding his torture; however, no results have been obtained.

    In August 2023, Muntadher participated in a collective hunger strike with around 800 prisoners in Jau Prison to protest mistreatment and inadequate healthcare. This hunger strike persisted for 40 days, ending in September 2023 with a promise from the prison administration to improve conditions inside the prison.

    Muntadher’s warrantless arrest, enforced disappearance, torture, denial of access to legal counsel during interrogations, unfair trials, and medical neglect represent clear violations of the Convention against Torture and Other Degrading and Inhuman Treatment (CAT), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Furthermore, the violations he endured as a minor contravene the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to which Bahrain is also a party.

    As such, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls upon the Bahraini authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Muntadher. ADHRB also urges the Bahraini government to investigate the allegations of arbitrary arrest as a minor, torture, enforced disappearance, denial of attorney access during interrogations, and medical neglect. ADHRB further advocates for the Bahraini government to provide compensation for the injuries he suffered due to torture and hold the perpetrators accountable. At the very least, ADHRB calls for a fair retrial for him under the Restorative Justice Law for Children, leading to his release. Additionally, it urges the Jau Prison administration to promptly provide appropriate healthcare for Muntadher, holding it responsible for any further deterioration in his health condition.

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  • Sayed Osama Ali Husain was a 16-year-old student when Bahraini authorities arbitrarily arrested him from the street without presenting an arrest warrant. During detention, he endured torture, denial of access to legal counsel, and an unfair trial based on confessions extracted under torture. He is currently serving a 22-year and 6-month sentence in Jau Prison on politically motivated charges.

     

    On 5 March 2017, officers from the Ministry of Interior (MOI), riot police officers, security police officers, and Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) officers arrested Sayed Osama on Al-Maared Street where he was going with his friend to have dinner at a restaurant located in a commercial area in the Bahraini capital, Manama. Subsequently, the officers transported Sayed Osama, simultaneously beating and torturing him, and raided the apartment where he had been hiding. They transferred him to the CID building afterward. Moreover, the parents were not aware that Sayed Osama was arrested at the time, whereas they found out the next day at dawn when they woke up to the news of the raid on the apartment. Approximately six hours after the arrest, they received a call from Sayed Osama stating that he was at the CID building, where he was detained for almost four days.

     

    Before his arrest, Sayed Osama was being pursued on a daily basis for two years. Consequently, he was compelled to hide in an apartment and lived in difficult conditions, experiencing instability and insecurity. Furthermore, two years before his arrest, at the age of 14, Sayed Osama had been sentenced to two years in prison on charges of riots, illegal assembly, and the manufacture of usable and explosive devices. On the other hand, the family’s house received multiple summonses at different times without mentioning the charges or providing any reason.

    At the CID building, officers repeatedly tortured Sayed Osama by beating him on various parts of his body during the entire interrogation period. They stripped him of his clothes and placed him in a very cold room for an extended period of time. He endured various other forms of torture but didn’t disclose all of them out of fear for the feelings of his parents. Due to the torture he endured, Sayed Osama has been suffering from various injuries. The interrogation lasted for about a week and was conducted without the presence of a lawyer. As a result of the threats and torture, he confessed before the Public Prosecution Office (PPO) to some of the charges against him.

    On 19 March 2017, two weeks after his arrest, Sayed Osama was transferred to the Dry Dock Detention Center, where he was able to meet his family for the first time since his arrest. On 11 May 2017, he was transferred to the New Dry Dock Prison, designed for convicts under the age of 21.

     

    Sayed Osama was not brought before a judge within 48 hours of his arrest, was not given adequate time and facilities to prepare for his trial, and wasn’t able to present evidence and challenge evidence presented against him. Furthermore, there was no lawyer present as neither the parents hired a lawyer nor did the court provide one.

    The court convicted Sayed Osama between 27 March 2016 and 28 February 2019, in cases related to 1) illegal assembly and rioting, 2) manufacturing usable or explosive devices, 3) intentional damage to buildings or public property, 4) placing structures simulating forms of explosives, 5) manufacturing or trading in explosives or importing weapons, 6) importing or possessing explosives or rifles or pistols, 7) explosion or attempted explosion, 8) arson, 9) violation of the terms of the license to import explosives or their quantity, and 10) negligent destruction. He was sentenced to a total of 22 years and 6 months in prison. Sayed Osama appealed some of the rulings, but the court of appeal rejected all the appeals and upheld the verdicts.

    Sayed Osama is still suffering from injuries resulting from the torture he was subjected to by the officers during his arrest and interrogation in 2017, and he is still being denied treatment and health care.

    Sayed Osama’s warrantless arrest, torture, denial of attorney access, unfair trial, and medical negligence constitute violations of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), to which Bahrain is a party. Furthermore, the violations he endured as a minor contravene the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to which Bahrain is also a party.

     

    As such, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls on the Bahraini authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Sayed Osama. ADHRB also urges the Bahraini government to investigate allegations of arbitrary arrest, torture, denial of legal counsel, and medical negligence, and to hold the perpetrators accountable. ADHRB further advocates for the Bahraini government to provide compensation for the injuries he suffered due to torture and hold the perpetrators accountable. At the very least, ADHRB advocates for a fair retrial for Sayed Osama under the Restorative Justice Law for Children, leading to his release. Additionally, it urges the Jau Prison administration to immediately provide Sayed Osama with the necessary health care to address the injuries resulting from torture, holding it responsible for any additional deterioration in his health condition.

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  • Abdulla Hatem Yusuf was a 15-year-old minor and school student when Bahraini authorities arrested him from his home on 15 May 2015. During his detention, he was subjected to torture, sexual harassment, denial of access to his lawyer during interrogation, and an unfair trial based on confessions extracted under torture. He is currently serving a 13-year sentence in Jau Prison on politically motivated charges.

    On 15 May 2015, plainclothes officers raided Abdulla’s home, conducted a search, and damaged the items inside. They arrested Abdulla while simultaneously beating him, without presenting any arrest warrant or disclosing the reason for the arrest. When the family inquired about his destination, the officers mocked them, stating that they were taking him to the Sitra Police Station. However, Abdulla later made a brief call to his family on the same day, informing them that he was at the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) building. Consequently, the family discovered that the officers had lied to them. 

    Abdulla had been arrested twice before. The initial arrest occurred when officers apprehended him from AlFariq Mosque, accusing him of intending to participate in a march on 15 January 2015. He was subsequently released on 29 January 2015. The second arrest occurred on 15 February 2015, when the CID contacted Abdulla’s father, asking him to bring his son to court on charges of harassing a girl by phone. When Abdulla was handed over, it became clear that they were pursuing him for a political case. He was later released on 11 March 2015.

    During Abdulla’s eight-day interrogation at the CID, officers beat him on the jaw and sensitive places of his body, stripped him naked, forced him to stand for extended periods, sexually harassed him, poured cold water on him, and placed him in a cold room. Moreover, they blindfolded him during the entire interrogation period, deprived him of sleep, and insulted him. Abdulla was also denied his right to attorney access, and officers promised his release if he confessed to the fabricated charges against him. Subsequently, he falsely confessed to the charges brought against him. As a result of the torture, Abdulla’s entire body was covered in bruises. On 23 May 2015, eight days after his arrest, Abdulla was transferred to the Public Prosecution Office (PPO), where he was accused of bombing and attempted murder of security personnel. He was later transferred to the Dry Dock Detention Center, where he was able to meet his family for the first time one month and a half after his arrest.

    Abdulla was not brought before a judge within 48 hours of his arrest, and he was not given adequate time and facilities to prepare for his trial. Furthermore, the court used confessions extracted from him under torture as evidence against him, even though he denied them before the judge, informing him that they were extracted under duress. On 28 April 2016, the court sentenced him to 3 years in prison on charges of 1) using fireworks to endanger people’s lives, 2) criminal arson, and 3) burning the National Bank of Bahrain’s ATM for terrorist purposes using explosives. Abdulla appealed the ruling, but the Court of Appeal rejected the appeal and upheld the sentence. Subsequently, on 26 May 2016, the High Criminal Court sentenced Abdulla to an additional 10 years in prison on charges of 4) attempted murder of security personnel, 5) arson, and 6) detonating a locally made bomb for terrorist purposes in the AlNoaim area, resulting in a total of 13 years in prison. Abdulla appealed the ruling, but on 13 December 2017, the Court of Appeal rejected the appeal and upheld the ruling. The verdict was subsequently upheld by the Court of Cassation.

    Abdulla’s warrantless arrest, torture, sexual harassment, denial of access to his lawyer during interrogation, and unfair trial constitute violations of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), to which Bahrain is a party. Furthermore, the violations he endured as a minor contravene the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to which Bahrain is also a party.

    Therefore, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls on the Bahraini authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Abdulla. ADHRB also urges the Bahraini government to investigate allegations of arbitrary arrest, torture, sexual harassment, and denial of access to legal counsel during the interrogation phase when he was a minor, and to hold the perpetrators accountable. At the very least, ADHRB advocates for a fair retrial for him under the Restorative Justice Law for Children, leading to his release.

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  • Mujtaba AbdulHusain Ali Ahmed was a 16-year-old high school student when he and his friend Husain Ahmed Habib Darrab were arrested at the latter’s grandfather’s house on 27 August 2019 without a warrant. He was subjected to torture, enforced disappearance, solitary confinement, and reprisal, and has been denied his right to a fair retrial before the Children Restorative Justice Court. He is currently held in Jau Prison, serving an 18-year and 7-month prison sentence resulting from an unfair trial.

    On 27 August 2019, plainclothes officers and Riot Police officers stormed the home of Husain’s grandfather, where Mujtaba and Husain were sleeping, without presenting an arrest or search warrant. Subsequently, officers from the Criminal Investigation Directorate (CID) and Security Police officers apprehended them. Then, they moved them to a bus where young men and children had gathered after authorities raided and arrested them in their homes. While on the bus, the officer asked Husain to tell him where Kameel Juma Hasan -the son of activist Najah Yusuf- was, so that he would release everyone on the bus. When he refused, he beat both of them. He was then moved to the CID building, where he forcibly disappeared, as his family knew nothing about his whereabouts. He also was denied contacting them.

    Mujtaba was convicted in 2017 of gathering charges and was sentenced in absentia to one year’s imprisonment and a fine. However, he was not imprisoned. In 2019, Mujtaba and his friend, Husain Ahmed Habib Darrab, knew that they were part of a chased group in which the authorities wanted Kameel Juma Hasan. 

    During Mujtaba’s interrogation at the CID, which lasted for two weeks, CID officers brutally tortured him and placed him in solitary confinement for eight days. They severely beat and kicked him all over his body, especially on sensitive areas, stripped him naked, and sexually harassed him. They presented him with a choice: either falsely stating that his friends Kameel Juma Hasan, Husain Ahmed Habib Darrab, and Habib Ali Habib committed a crime, or fabricating charges against his uncle, Qasim AlMoumen, who was outside Bahrain. They also threatened to arrest his grandmother and charge her in the case if he did not confess. As a result, he falsely confessed to his friends under pressure. Because of the intense torture, he developed weak hearing. Subsequently, Mujtaba was transferred to the Dry Dock Detention Center, where he managed to contact his family for the first time since his arrest. However, the officers insisted that he put the phone on speaker mode and only allowed him a very brief call. This call lasted for a few seconds, during which Mujtaba only managed to say, “I’m under investigation, and I’m fine,” before hanging up. The prison administration permitted him to meet his family for the first time three months after his arrest.

    Mujtaba was not brought promptly before a judge, did not have adequate time and facilities to prepare for his trial, and was denied access to an attorney. In court, he informed the judge that his confessions were made under torture; however, the judge ignored his statement. Furthermore, he did not attend all the court sessions as the prison administration was denying him the right to participate in the sessions under false pretexts, such as not shaving his hair. Despite being a minor, no one was allowed to accompany him to the trial. Consequently, the court convicted Mujtaba between 2019 and 2020 in 12 cases related to illegal gathering, riots, criminal arson, and the manufacturing and possession of explosive packaging and Molotov. It sentenced him to a total of 22 years in prison with a fine while issuing some of these sentences in absentia. Mujtaba appealed his ruling, and it was reduced to 18 years and seven months on appeal.

    While serving his sentence at the Dry Dock Detention Center, officers placed Mujtaba in solitary confinement many times. On two occasions, they beat him and put him in solitary confinement just because he was standing and looking out of the cell window. In September 2023, Mujtaba was transferred to Jau Prison after he turned 21 years old, where he is currently serving his sentence.

    On 16 September 2023, about 28 young convicts initiated a hunger strike due to the Jau prison administration’s disregard for their rights. The prisoners’ demands included their request for education, family visits, healthy meals, clothing, proper medical treatment, and to be retried before the Children Restorative Justice Court under the Restorative Justice Law for Children. Mujtaba joined this strike, demanding a retrial before the Children’s Court, but the Public Prosecution rejected his repeated requests. He consistently asked the representatives of the Public Prosecutor to apply the Restorative Justice Law for Children, issued in 2021, to his case, as he was sentenced in the adult court when he was 17 years old. In his last meeting with a Public Prosecutor’s representative, the official assured him that a report of his case would be filed with the prisoners and children’s court. However, he has yet to receive any response. The prison administration also promised Mujtaba to meet his demands, so he ended his hunger strike. However, his demands have not yet been fulfilled.

    Mujtaba’s warrantless arrest as a minor, enforced disappearance, solitary confinement, torture, unfair trial, reprisal, and denial of his right to a fair retrial before the Children Restorative Justice Court all constitute violations of Bahrain’s obligations under the Bahraini Constitution and international treaties. These treaties include the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

    As such, Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls on the Bahraini authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Mujtaba. ADHRB also urges an investigation into the allegations of torture, enforced disappearance, solitary confinement, unfair trial, and ill-treatment, with a commitment to holding the perpetrators accountable. Furthermore, it calls on Bahrain to respect Mujtaba’s rights as a child, provide him compensation for all the violations he has faced in prison, or at the very least, respond to his demand for retrial under the Restorative Justice Law for Children, leading to his release.

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  • Mohamed Jaafar Mohamed Ali (AlShamali) was a 15-year-old Bahraini child and school student when he was arbitrarily arrested from his home on 15 July 2012. He was subjected to torture, enforced disappearance, solitary confinement, medical neglect, an unfair trial, reprisals, and ill-treatment. Additionally, he was denied education, access to healthy food, sufficient access to water, family visits, and the ability to pray during his detention. He is currently held in Jau Prison, serving a 21-year and 6-month prison sentence.

     

    On 15 July 2012, security vehicles surrounded Mohamed’s house and the entire neighborhood. Masked plainclothes officers, armed and equipped with a searchlight, raided the home without presenting an arrest or search warrant. They conducted a search and apprehended Mohamed. Subsequently, he was taken to the Dawwar 17 police station, where he underwent interrogation and forcibly disappeared for 18 days.

     

    During his interrogation at the Dawwar 17 police station, Mohamed endured severe physical and psychological torture inflicted by the General Security Forces. They kicked him on his chest until he lost consciousness, stripped him naked, slapped him, spat on him, and placed him on an iron bed in a very cold cell. Officers placed iron restraints on his hands and legs, forced him to move between two corners, walk barefoot, and sexually harassed him. They beat his head and submerged it in water, forced him down an overflowing toilet, and extinguished cigarettes in his mouth. At one point, they even put him in a garbage bin. Each time he walked, officers were beating him and sending him to solitary confinement without reason. They threw his clothes in the cell corridor, instructing detainees to step on them, and prevented interaction by punishing anyone who spoke with him with solitary confinement. False rumors of his death were spread. Due to this torture, he suffers from chronic headaches, chest pain, eye, head, and ear injuries, and has lost hearing in his right ear. A head wound resulting from torture was sewn four times until the doctor refused to continue due to the risk to his life. Without treatment, he is at risk of losing eyesight. Following this brutal torture, Mohamed was coerced into giving a false confession related to assaulting a man from another sect and damaging his vehicle.

     

    When brought before the judge at the Public Prosecution Office (PPO), he denied the charges and, in an attempt to show evidence of torture, removed his clothes to reveal the marks on his body. However, the judge ignored the torture marks and sentenced Mohamed to six months imprisonment and a fine, all without the presence of a lawyer and without notifying his family. Eighteen days after his arrest, he finally contacted his mother, informing her that he was held at the Dry Dock Detention Center, had undergone interrogation, and appeared before a judge in the PPO. Mohamed appealed his sentence and was later found innocent, but the appeal ruling was issued after he had already completed his sentence. 

     

    After completing his sentence, he was not released; instead, he was taken back to the Dawwar 17 police station. There, the center’s director slapped him for denying the charges brought against him before the judge. Subsequently, he endured further torture at the Dawwar 17 police station in an attempt to coerce a confession. Following this, he was transported to the Dry Dock Detention Center in relation to a second case.

     

    On 21 March 2013, the court convicted Mohamed of the following charges: 1) attempted murder, 2) burning a Jeep car and tires, throwing Molotov cocktails, and 3) obstructing security personnel from performing their duties. As a result, the court initially sentenced him to 15 years of imprisonment and fined. Mohamed appealed his sentence, leading to the Court of Appeals reducing it to 10 years of imprisonment. He further appealed to the Court of Cassation, which affirmed the sentence.

     

    On 10 March 2015, a prison protest occurred in Jau Prison. Subsequently, riot police deployed tear gas and birdshot in close quarters to subdue the inmates, after which they were led into courtyards where they were collectively beaten and humiliated. Following this, the prisoners were deprived of food for several days and prevented from bathing for several weeks. It is noteworthy that a significant portion of the inmates who faced torture did not participate in the protest. Mohamed, who was accused of involvement in the protest, experienced torture, injuries, and forced disappearance in its aftermath. He was convicted of the following charges: 1) incitement, 2) assault on security personnel and obstructing their work, and 3) vandalism and destruction of the contents and facilities of the Jau Prison building. As a result, he received another 15 years of imprisonment, which was later reduced to 10 years after an appeal. The appeal ruling was subsequently upheld by the Court of Cassation.

     

    Mohamed repeatedly experienced medical neglect for his eczema condition, regularly receiving unhealthy food in insufficient quantities and being denied adequate access to water. In April 2017, following a complaint submitted by Mohamed’s mother to the Ombudsman regarding the denial of medical treatment for his eczema, prison officers restrained him to the prison gate for three days instead of providing the necessary treatment. Additionally, they filed a complaint against him. On 19 June 2017, while visiting Mohamed, his family noticed blisters on his head, face, and fingers due to poor hygiene caused by a lack of showers for a month due to water cuts. He informed them that he and his fellow detainees were enduring harsh treatment, confined to their cells, and subjected to degrading inspections. During these inspections, prison officers intentionally touched private areas of their bodies and molested them when entering and exiting the prison yard. Mohamed also revealed that prisoners expressing anger were beaten or hung on doors, and officers falsely claimed that the phones were broken, shutting them down for a full month. He further indicated that there were eye and face injuries among detainees, some of whom were kicked in their genitals.

     

    On 28 November 2017, Mohamed received a three-year prison sentence for insulting a public employee, which was later reduced to one year and a half after an appeal. This adjustment brought the total length of his sentence to 21 years and 6 months of imprisonment. Following this, he was transferred to Jau Prison without his parents’ knowledge, and for a week after the transfer, he was not permitted any outside contact. Subsequently, he reported inadequate detention conditions, including a lack of warm winter clothes and being compelled to take cold showers.

     

    Following his second and third sentences, Mohamed endured repeated torture, assaults, insults, threats, solitary confinement, forced disappearances, denial of medical care, visits, and calls, as well as reprisals and mistreatment. Additionally, he was prohibited from praying. Furthermore, personal items such as his clothes, blanket, towel, and robe – brought by his mother based on the dermatologist’s recommendation for eczema control – were destroyed. Consequently, his mother filed several complaints with the Ombudsman, the Special Investigation Unit (SIU), and the Public Prosecution Office (PPO) concerning these violations. Unfortunately, none of these complaints resulted in any tangible outcomes.

     

    On 9 July 2018, water cuts occurred in various buildings of Jau Prison, initiated by the deliberate delay of prison authorities in repairing and maintaining the plumbing. These water cuts persisted for more than a month, with some lasting for 36 consecutive hours. Victims, including Mohamed, reported that these cuts affected both drinking water and water for bathing and toilet facilities. To cope, they filled bottles during brief periods of water supply to use for ablution and washing. The lack of consistent access to water contributed to unhygienic conditions, resulting in the spread of disease and skin conditions. Mohamed reported suffering from severe burning sensations in his body and excretion of fluids due to untreated eczema. The condition was exacerbated by the lack of hygiene, and the prison administration neglected and postponed his need for treatment.

     

    In August 2018, Mohamed’s mother stated that her son had been deprived of education since his arrest, despite the family paying the education fees to the prison administration each year. Although he was later permitted to continue his high school education within the prison, he was denied enrollment in university under the pretext that the prison administration had selected a specific number of students.

     

    In May 2019, during the month of Ramadan, many detainees in Jau Prison, including Mohamed, experienced food poisoning due to the subpar quality of the food provided to them. The prisoners endured severe stomach pain and intense diarrhea, making their fasting even more challenging.

     

    Mohamed has been denied family visits for over a year. His family last visited him on 28 July 2022, when his father and brother were permitted to see him. However, they denied entry to his mother, stating that she “did not take the COVID-19 vaccine.” Despite presenting the officer with a negative PCR result from one day before the visit, he still refused her entry. As a result, she is demanding the right to visit her son, as the last time she saw him was more than three years ago, before the COVID-19 outbreak. Additionally, Mohamed has been denied the right to make a video call with his mother since July 2023.

     

    In August 2023, Mohamed took part in a collective hunger strike along with over 800 detainees in Jau Prison, protesting their harsh prison conditions. As a result, his blood sugar level plummeted.

     

    Mohamed’s arbitrary detention when he was a minor, denial of access to a lawyer during the interrogation period, torture, solitary confinement, forced disappearance, denial of family visits and video calls with his family, hindered education, inadequate food, limited access to water, and the restriction of the right to pray, combined with an unfair trial, exposure to reprisals, and medical neglect, constitute violations of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), to which Bahrain is a party.

     

    Therefore, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls on Bahrain to uphold its human rights obligations by immediately and unconditionally releasing Mohamed. ADHRB further calls for a thorough investigation into all allegations of his arbitrary detention, torture, ill-treatment, unfair trial, solitary confinement, enforced disappearance, denial of family visits, education, prayer, adequate food, proper access to water, and medical neglect, while compensating for Mohamed and holding the perpetrators accountable, or at the very least holding a fair retrial leading to his release. ADHRB urges Bahrain to permit Mohamed to receive family visits, particularly from his mother, who has been unable to visit him for more than three years. ADHRB also calls for allowing him to make video calls with his family, pursue a university education, and receive healthy food. Additionally, ADHRB insists that Bahrain provides suitable medical treatment for Mohamed, holding the country responsible for any further deterioration in his health condition.

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  • Haider Ebrahim Mulla Hasan was a 16-year-old Bahraini child and a student completing his education in school when he was arrested by Bahraini authorities in 2015. He is the youngest of three detained brothers, Mohamed and Hussain. Bahraini authorities forcibly disappeared him and tortured him to extract a forced confession. He was sentenced to 23 years imprisonment with revocation of his nationality. He is still in the New Dry Dock Detention Center, which is designated for imprisoned individuals under the age of 21. Haider currently suffers from several health problems due to medical negligence by the prison administration and his denial of treatment. Some of these problems have not yet been diagnosed due to negligence, which makes his health condition worse.

    On 29 November 2015, officers in civilian clothes arrested Haider without an arrest warrant on the street in the village of Sanabis when he was only 16 years old. Then they took him to the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) and forcibly disappeared him for three months, during which they interrogated him without a lawyer and tortured him. They subjected him to various methods of torture to extract a confession, including physical beatings with batons, slapping in the face, beatings in sensitive areas, and exposure to electric shocks. He was also subjected to intimidation, threats, and insults. As a result, Haider suffers from several health problems, including poor vision in one of his eyes, complete hearing loss in one of his ears, and respiratory problems due to his broken nose. He was transferred to Salmaniya Hospital following torture, but these were only visits to the doctor, and he was not provided adequate treatment.

    On 1 February 2018, Haider was sentenced to 23 years imprisonment with revocation of his nationality, fined 2,784 Bahraini Dinars, and had his belongings confiscated on charges of 1) illegal assembly, 2) assaulting an intelligence officer, and 3) participating in the Karranah bombing. He was unable to reach his lawyer during interrogation, was not brought before a judge within 48 hours of his arrest, and was not provided with adequate time to prepare for trial. Although he and his family desired to appeal the ruling, they were unable to do so because they couldn’t afford the expensive costs of a lawyer. His citizenship was later reinstated through a royal decree issued in April 2019.

    Authorities intermittently held Haider in solitary confinement throughout his detention and incarceration. In March 2018, he was held in solitary confinement for more than two months as punishment for refusing to sign a document without knowing its contents. When he asked when his solitary confinement would end, the guards refused to answer. Haider believes that the extended solitary confinement caused him psychological harm. He then went on a hunger strike to protest the punitive use of extended solitary confinement and other abuses in the prison system. At that time, the prison administration deducted more than 25 minutes from the one-hour visit period allocated to his family members. They were permitted to see Haider 10 minutes after the visit began, but they were arbitrarily kicked out 15 minutes before its scheduled end as an additional form of retaliation against him. 

    While serving his sentence, Haider went on several hunger strikes to protest the periodic retaliation against him by placing him in solitary confinement. During one of these strikes, in August 2019, his family noticed while visiting him in the Dry Dock Detention Center that he was suffering from swelling in one of his eyes as a result of beatings and torture. He told them about being beaten, punched, kicked, and pepper-sprayed by officers in the prison to force him to end the strike.

    On 9 January 2022, after not hearing from Haider for more than ten days, his family received a phone call from him, in which he reported that he had been detained in solitary confinement for a week without knowing the reasons. The family expressed their deep concern for his safety and asked the prison administration to allow him the right to call to check on him.

    Haider suffers from several other health problems that are getting worse due to medical negligence against him and his deprivation of medical care by the prison administration, as the last time he saw a specialist doctor was in July 2022 at Salmaniya Hospital. On 2 November 2022, after suffering for a long time from stomach pain and the deterioration of his health condition, He was supposed to undergo an endoscopy and colonoscopy, but the prison administration did not transfer him to the hospital to undergo the operation.

    On 25 December 2022, Haider indicated in a call with his parents that he continues to suffer from an internal medical problem, which he does not know whether it is in the stomach or colon due to the ongoing medical neglect of his health, as when he is transferred to the prison clinic, he is only given painkillers without diagnosing the problem or dispensing a treatment. In detail, He indicated that he vomits and defecates blood at least 3-4 times a month. He also confirmed that he is unable to eat and suffers from severe pain in his head and difficulty breathing. In addition, Haider suffers from a problem with his teeth, as eight of them were removed without installing the replacements they promised him, which hindered his ability to chew his food.

    Haider’s arbitrary detention when he was a minor,  torture,  unfair trial, exposure to solitary confinement and enforced disappearance as retaliatory measures, as well as medical neglect, constitute a violation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), to which Bahrain is a party.

    Therefore, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls on Bahrain to fulfill its human rights obligations by ensuring a fair retrial for Haider and by investigating all allegations of his arbitrary arrest when he was a child, torture, ill-treatment, and his exposure to an unfair trial, solitary confinement, and enforced disappearance with the aim of reprisal. It also calls on Bahrain to investigate the allegations of medical negligence while holding the perpetrators accountable. ADHRB also sounds the alarm about the deterioration of Haider’s health due to the continued medical negligence against him, which has reached the point of refraining from diagnosing one of the health problems he suffers from, calling on Bahrain to diagnose his health problems as soon as possible and to urgently provide him with appropriate treatment, holding the Government of Bahrain responsible for any further deterioration in his health condition.

    The post Profile in Persecution: Haider Ebrahim Mulla Hasan appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

    This post was originally published on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

  • On 17 September 2023, approximately 28 young Bahraini detainees in the Dry Dock Detention Center began a new hunger strike in protest against the continued violations committed against them by the prison administration, and the neglect of the relevant state institutions to carry out their duties, notably the National Institution for Human Rights, and the Ombudsman.

    The rights of children detained in the Dry Dock Detention Center are subject to serious violations, as most of the arrests are based on political backgrounds, and the victims are subjected to unfair trials. In 2011, the state security institutions launched a series of arbitrary arrest campaigns that affected various Bahraini regions and towns and included citizens of different age groups, including children who were not over the legal age at the time of their arrest, for participating in peaceful demonstrations in the movement demanding reform and democracy. Since that date, the scene has been repeated as part of the policies of suppressing freedom and encouraging impunity in Bahrain.

    Due to the lack of transparency in the Ministry of Interior’s data, there are no accurate statistics on the number of detained children. However, investigative reports have previously revealed that Bahrain detains about 150 children, 10 of whom are in Jau Prison – which is designated for adults – while the remaining 140 are divided into two wards. One ward is designated for children aged between 15 and 18 years old, and the other is designated for solitary confinement. Despite these reports, the Bahraini government claims that it has no children in detention, stating instead that those arrested from the age group of 15 to 18 years are serving their sentence in a private reform center.

    Young convicts in the Dry Dock Detention Center are exposed to many human rights violations, including fundamental rights guaranteed by international laws and conventions. Their most prominent demands relate to the following:

    – The right to education;

    – The right to medical treatment;

    – The right to obtain diverse and healthy diets;

    – The right to communicate with the outside world;

    – The right to family visits;

    – The right to have appropriate clothing; and

    – The right to benefit from the Law on Restorative Justice and the Protection of Children from Mistreatment.

    The Law on Restorative Justice for Children and their Protection from Mistreatment was approved on 15 February 2021 and came into effect on 18 August 2021. However, its effects were not reflected on the conditions of young convicts in the Dry Dock Detention Center, nor on those who were arrested after the enactment of this law. These include:

    •       notifying the child’s guardian or person responsible for him – as the case may be – in the legally prescribed ways of every decision or action taken against the child;
    •       ensuring that detained children are treated without discrimination and with an equal degree of decent and humane treatment and ensuring that all necessary rights and needs are met, and that there is no criminal liability on the child who was not more than fifteen full calendar years of age at the time of committing the crime;
    •       that the child victim or witness, in all stages of investigation and trial, must have the right to be heard, his demands must be understood, and he must be treated in a way that preserves his dignity and guarantees his physical, psychological, and moral integrity;
    •       that there be no discrimination between child prisoners on the basis of gender, origin, language, religion, or belief;
    •       The periodic medical examination of all children;
    •       The provision of academic and practical study curricula helping develop their intellectual abilities;
    •       the observation of the child’s right to freedom of practice of religion; and
    •       that, in the event that a child was subjected to physical or sexual mistreatment by the person responsible for him, the specialized prosecution should appoint someone to legally represent the child to carry out all the procedures stipulated in the law, including submitting a complaint, objection, grievance, and appeal against all procedures taken regarding the child.

    Since its passage, this law has been subjected to numerous criticisms, as the government of Bahrain exploits its promulgation to promote the reforms that it has carried out. Unfortunately, its application is still limited to a very small number of young convicts in the Dry Dock Detention Center, despite the fact that many of them meet the conditions of the law and almost all of them demand the right to benefit from it.

    As well, the law fails to guarantee children’s fundamental rights to due process. The law does not prohibit questioning or interrogating children without the presence of a lawyer or their guardians. Article 66 states that “health, social, legal and rehabilitative services must be provided to accused children” at “all stages”, including during “arrest and investigation.” However, Article 67 stipulates that a child has no right to a lawyer until after the child’s case reaches trial. The law also fails to clearly stipulate the child’s right to appeal his deprivation of liberty, while Article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states that every child in conflict with the law has the right to “immediate access to legal assistance.”

    International human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have previously condemned the failure of this law to protect the fundamental rights stipulated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as it legitimizes arbitrary detention on charges of exercising the right to peaceful assembly, and allows the interrogation and investigation of children without the presence of their parents or attorney.

    The prison for young convicts fails to uphold the most fundamental rights, and detainees on charges related to the right to expression are subjected to ill-treatment, torture, and reprisal. They are deprived of healthy meals and clothing, are denied family visits, and are denied means of entertainment, which exposes them to psychological and health risks and harms, and which is inconsistent with human and moral principles and values.

    As a result of all of this mistreatment, many of the children have undertaken repeated hunger strikes, despite the dangers that such actions pose to their health. Recently, they announced their hunger strike on 17 September 2023, in protest against the Public Prosecution’s neglect of their right to benefit from the Law on Restorative Justice as a means that may help them get escape these violations. Among them is Hussein Ahmed Habib, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison; he was less than 16 years old at the time his alleged offense was committed. He submitted more than five requests to more than one public prosecutor representative, demanding his retrial before the Children’s Court, but to no avail. Also, Mujtaba Abdul Hussein Abdulla, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison when he was 17 years old, is demanding his retrial before the Children’s Court, but the public prosecution rejects his repeated requests.

    Instead of children being behind their school desks, they are deprived of the right to education. This violation does not stop there – it destroys their future even after the end of their sentence, as they are deprived of job opportunities due to the denial of “good conduct” certificates for political prisoners.

    Among them is Ali Isa Jasim, one of the young convicts who was deprived of his fundamental rights, after he was arrested when he was fifteen years old. He went on two hunger strikes in one month, protesting the denial of his right to education. Despite the promises he has received from the prison administration to provide him with an education, he has yet to be given access to learning resources. His suffering is shared by Khalil Ebrahim Sabah, who resorted to a hunger strike to protest the deprivation of his fundamental rights, including education, for two years. They are therefore waiting to be transferred to Jau Prison to obtain this right.

    In addition to the torture, forced disappearance, solitary confinement, and psychological threats they endure, many child detainees also face deprivation of the necessary treatment and medical care. They are denied medical visits, and the prison administration ignores the conditions of those suffering from illnesses and in need of constant follow-up. On 17 June 2023, six young convicts, including Khalil Sabah and Fares Salman, declared a hunger strike to protest against their deprivation of health care for their scabies disease, which they contracted while in prison due to squalid conditions. Further, Haidar Ebrahim Mulla Hasan, who was arrested at the age of 16 and sentenced to 23 years in prison in three different cases, did not suffer from any health problems before his arrest, but as a result of torture and the dire conditions in prison, including medical neglect, he began to suffer from severe stomach pains to the point of vomiting and defecating blood. He continues to suffer from severe headaches, difficulty breathing, and a dental problem. Despite this, the prison administration refuses to refer him to a doctor for a diagnosis of his condition, and he has not received any treatment yet. In fact, the last time he was presented to a doctor was over a year ago.

    Following the crackdown on popular protests that the country witnessed in 2011, criticism prompted Bahrain to establish three bodies affiliated with the Ministry of Interior: the Prisoners and Detainees Rights Commission (PDRC), the Ombudsman, and the Special Investigation Unit in the Public Prosecution, but the lack of independence of these bodies and their political affiliations has rendered them unfit for purpose. Since their establishment, complaints raised by detainees, especially young convicts, have not been investigated, and the security forces responsible for torturing political prisoners have not been held accountable.

    By exposing young convicts to violations, including forced detention, torture, denial of medical care, and of the right to education, Bahrain is violating the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Nelson Mandela Rules, which stress the rights of Prisoners, including:

    •       Treat all prisoners with respect because of their inherent dignity and value as human beings.
    •       The prohibition of subjecting any prisoner to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, and all prisoners should be protected from this.
    •       The right to obtain legal representation and to investigate all cases of death in custody, disciplinary action, and punishment.
    •       The prison system should strive to minimize the differences between prison life and free life.

    Hence, Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls on the Bahraini authorities to:

    •       Stop exposing young convicts to ongoing violations, including forced detention and torture.
    •       Grant young convicts their right to education, medical care, and other fundamental human rights.
    •       Protect minors from ill-treatment, investigate allegations of torture, and stop the policy of impunity that has been practiced until now.
    •       Respond to the demands of young people, and not renounce the promises made to them.
    •       Held them a retrial in accordance with the fair trial procedures that apply to children in order to obtain their immediate and unconditional release, guarantee all their civil rights, and compensate them. 

    The post Young convicts in the Dry Dock: ongoing violations and delayed justice appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

    This post was originally published on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

  • On 17 September 2023, approximately 28 young Bahraini detainees in the Dry Dock Detention Center began a new hunger strike in protest against the continued violations committed against them by the prison administration, and the neglect of the relevant state institutions to carry out their duties, notably the National Institution for Human Rights, and the Ombudsman.

    The rights of children detained in the Dry Dock Detention Center are subject to serious violations, as most of the arrests are based on political backgrounds, and the victims are subjected to unfair trials. In 2011, the state security institutions launched a series of arbitrary arrest campaigns that affected various Bahraini regions and towns and included citizens of different age groups, including children who were not over the legal age at the time of their arrest, for participating in peaceful demonstrations in the movement demanding reform and democracy. Since that date, the scene has been repeated as part of the policies of suppressing freedom and encouraging impunity in Bahrain.

    Due to the lack of transparency in the Ministry of Interior’s data, there are no accurate statistics on the number of detained children. However, investigative reports have previously revealed that Bahrain detains about 150 children, 10 of whom are in Jau Prison – which is designated for adults – while the remaining 140 are divided into two wards. One ward is designated for children aged between 15 and 18 years old, and the other is designated for solitary confinement. Despite these reports, the Bahraini government claims that it has no children in detention, stating instead that those arrested from the age group of 15 to 18 years are serving their sentence in a private reform center.

    Young convicts in the Dry Dock Detention Center are exposed to many human rights violations, including fundamental rights guaranteed by international laws and conventions. Their most prominent demands relate to the following:

    – The right to education;

    – The right to medical treatment;

    – The right to obtain diverse and healthy diets;

    – The right to communicate with the outside world;

    – The right to family visits;

    – The right to have appropriate clothing; and

    – The right to benefit from the Law on Restorative Justice and the Protection of Children from Mistreatment.

    The Law on Restorative Justice for Children and their Protection from Mistreatment was approved on 15 February 2021 and came into effect on 18 August 2021. However, its effects were not reflected on the conditions of young convicts in the Dry Dock Detention Center, nor on those who were arrested after the enactment of this law. These include:

    •       notifying the child’s guardian or person responsible for him – as the case may be – in the legally prescribed ways of every decision or action taken against the child;
    •       ensuring that detained children are treated without discrimination and with an equal degree of decent and humane treatment and ensuring that all necessary rights and needs are met, and that there is no criminal liability on the child who was not more than fifteen full calendar years of age at the time of committing the crime;
    •       that the child victim or witness, in all stages of investigation and trial, must have the right to be heard, his demands must be understood, and he must be treated in a way that preserves his dignity and guarantees his physical, psychological, and moral integrity;
    •       that there be no discrimination between child prisoners on the basis of gender, origin, language, religion, or belief;
    •       The periodic medical examination of all children;
    •       The provision of academic and practical study curricula helping develop their intellectual abilities;
    •       the observation of the child’s right to freedom of practice of religion; and
    •       that, in the event that a child was subjected to physical or sexual mistreatment by the person responsible for him, the specialized prosecution should appoint someone to legally represent the child to carry out all the procedures stipulated in the law, including submitting a complaint, objection, grievance, and appeal against all procedures taken regarding the child.

    Since its passage, this law has been subjected to numerous criticisms, as the government of Bahrain exploits its promulgation to promote the reforms that it has carried out. Unfortunately, its application is still limited to a very small number of young convicts in the Dry Dock Detention Center, despite the fact that many of them meet the conditions of the law and almost all of them demand the right to benefit from it.

    As well, the law fails to guarantee children’s fundamental rights to due process. The law does not prohibit questioning or interrogating children without the presence of a lawyer or their guardians. Article 66 states that “health, social, legal and rehabilitative services must be provided to accused children” at “all stages”, including during “arrest and investigation.” However, Article 67 stipulates that a child has no right to a lawyer until after the child’s case reaches trial. The law also fails to clearly stipulate the child’s right to appeal his deprivation of liberty, while Article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states that every child in conflict with the law has the right to “immediate access to legal assistance.”

    International human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, have previously condemned the failure of this law to protect the fundamental rights stipulated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as it legitimizes arbitrary detention on charges of exercising the right to peaceful assembly, and allows the interrogation and investigation of children without the presence of their parents or attorney.

    The prison for young convicts fails to uphold the most fundamental rights, and detainees on charges related to the right to expression are subjected to ill-treatment, torture, and reprisal. They are deprived of healthy meals and clothing, are denied family visits, and are denied means of entertainment, which exposes them to psychological and health risks and harms, and which is inconsistent with human and moral principles and values.

    As a result of all of this mistreatment, many of the children have undertaken repeated hunger strikes, despite the dangers that such actions pose to their health. Recently, they announced their hunger strike on 17 September 2023, in protest against the Public Prosecution’s neglect of their right to benefit from the Law on Restorative Justice as a means that may help them get escape these violations. Among them is Hussein Ahmed Habib, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison; he was less than 16 years old at the time his alleged offense was committed. He submitted more than five requests to more than one public prosecutor representative, demanding his retrial before the Children’s Court, but to no avail. Also, Mujtaba Abdul Hussein Abdulla, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison when he was 17 years old, is demanding his retrial before the Children’s Court, but the public prosecution rejects his repeated requests.

    Instead of children being behind their school desks, they are deprived of the right to education. This violation does not stop there – it destroys their future even after the end of their sentence, as they are deprived of job opportunities due to the denial of “good conduct” certificates for political prisoners.

    Among them is Ali Isa Jasim, one of the young convicts who was deprived of his fundamental rights, after he was arrested when he was fifteen years old. He went on two hunger strikes in one month, protesting the denial of his right to education. Despite the promises he has received from the prison administration to provide him with an education, he has yet to be given access to learning resources. His suffering is shared by Khalil Ebrahim Sabah, who resorted to a hunger strike to protest the deprivation of his fundamental rights, including education, for two years. They are therefore waiting to be transferred to Jau Prison to obtain this right.

    In addition to the torture, forced disappearance, solitary confinement, and psychological threats they endure, many child detainees also face deprivation of the necessary treatment and medical care. They are denied medical visits, and the prison administration ignores the conditions of those suffering from illnesses and in need of constant follow-up. On 17 June 2023, six young convicts, including Khalil Sabah and Fares Salman, declared a hunger strike to protest against their deprivation of health care for their scabies disease, which they contracted while in prison due to squalid conditions. Further, Haidar Ebrahim Mulla Hasan, who was arrested at the age of 16 and sentenced to 23 years in prison in three different cases, did not suffer from any health problems before his arrest, but as a result of torture and the dire conditions in prison, including medical neglect, he began to suffer from severe stomach pains to the point of vomiting and defecating blood. He continues to suffer from severe headaches, difficulty breathing, and a dental problem. Despite this, the prison administration refuses to refer him to a doctor for a diagnosis of his condition, and he has not received any treatment yet. In fact, the last time he was presented to a doctor was over a year ago.

    Following the crackdown on popular protests that the country witnessed in 2011, criticism prompted Bahrain to establish three bodies affiliated with the Ministry of Interior: the Prisoners and Detainees Rights Commission (PDRC), the Ombudsman, and the Special Investigation Unit in the Public Prosecution, but the lack of independence of these bodies and their political affiliations has rendered them unfit for purpose. Since their establishment, complaints raised by detainees, especially young convicts, have not been investigated, and the security forces responsible for torturing political prisoners have not been held accountable.

    By exposing young convicts to violations, including forced detention, torture, denial of medical care, and of the right to education, Bahrain is violating the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Nelson Mandela Rules, which stress the rights of Prisoners, including:

    •       Treat all prisoners with respect because of their inherent dignity and value as human beings.
    •       The prohibition of subjecting any prisoner to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, and all prisoners should be protected from this.
    •       The right to obtain legal representation and to investigate all cases of death in custody, disciplinary action, and punishment.
    •       The prison system should strive to minimize the differences between prison life and free life.

    Hence, Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) calls on the Bahraini authorities to:

    •       Stop exposing young convicts to ongoing violations, including forced detention and torture.
    •       Grant young convicts their right to education, medical care, and other fundamental human rights.
    •       Protect minors from ill-treatment, investigate allegations of torture, and stop the policy of impunity that has been practiced until now.
    •       Respond to the demands of young people, and not renounce the promises made to them.
    •       Held them a retrial in accordance with the fair trial procedures that apply to children in order to obtain their immediate and unconditional release, guarantee all their civil rights, and compensate them. 

    The post Young convicts in the Dry Dock: ongoing violations and delayed justice appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

    This post was originally published on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

  • Seven thousand British children were sent to Australia last century, told they were orphans or unwanted. It wasn’t true. Now facing old age, 1,400 are still searching for their families

    It wasn’t until he was 71 that Michael Lachmann found out what a different life he might have had. He had always believed he was an orphan. But, already an old man, he discovered he was never an orphan. He had been loved and wanted. During the second world war his mother had left letters at a residential nursery saying she was only placing him in care while she was working and until “daddy gets home from Japan and we will be making a home for little Michael”. There was no childcare then, unless you were rich.

    Instead of being collected by his mother at the war’s end, at the age of five he was shipped to Australia and placed in the Castledare Boys Home, run by the Christian Brothers, where numerous boys were starved, beaten and subjected to sexual abuse. He was told his mother was dead.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • A majority of Cubans voted in favour of a new families code that allows same-sex couples to marry and adopt children. Ian Ellis-Jones reports.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • “We regret we failed to protect you.” This was part of a statement issued by United Nations human rights experts on July 14, urging the Israeli government to release Palestinian prisoner Ahmad Manasra. Only 14 years old at the time of his arrest and torture by Israeli forces, Manasra is now 20 years old. His case is a representation of Israel’s overall inhumane treatment of Palestinian children.

    The experts’ statement was forceful and heartfelt. It accused Israel of depriving young Manasra “of his childhood, family environment, protection and all the rights he should have been guaranteed as a child.” It referred to the case as ‘haunting’, considering Manasra’s “deteriorating mental conditions”. The statement went further, declaring that “this case … is a stain on all of us as part of the international human rights community”.

    Condemning Israel for its ill-treatment of Palestinian children, whether those under siege in war-stricken Gaza, or under military occupation and apartheid in the rest of the occupied territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, is commonplace.

    Yet, somehow, Israel was still spared a spot on the unflattering list, issued annually by the United Nations Secretary-General, naming and shaming governments and groups that commit grave violations against children and minors anywhere in the world.

    Oddly, the report does recognize Israel’s horrific record of violating children’s rights in Palestine. It details some of these violations, which UN workers have directly verified. This includes “2,934 grave violations against 1,208 Palestinian children” in the year 2021 alone. However, the report equates between Israel’s record, one of the most dismal in the world, and that of Palestinians, namely the fact that 9 Israeli children were impacted by Palestinian violence in that whole year.

    Though the deliberate harming of a single child is regrettable regardless of the circumstances or the perpetrator, it is mind-boggling that the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres found it appropriate to equate the systematic violations carried out by the Israeli military as a matter of course and the 9 Israeli minors harmed by Palestinian armed groups, whether intentionally or not.

    To deal with the obvious discrepancy between Palestinian and Israeli child victims, the UN report lumped together all categories to distract from the identity of the perpetrator, thus lessening the focus on the Israeli crimes. For example, the report states that a total of 88 children were killed throughout Palestine, of whom 69 were killed in Gaza and 17 in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. However, the report breaks down these murders in such a way that conflates Palestinian and Israeli children as if purposely trying to confuse the reader. When read carefully, one discovers that all of these killings were carried out by Israeli forces, except for two.

    More, the report uses the same logic to break down the number of children maimed in the conflict, though of the 1,128 maimed children, only 7 were Israelis. Of the remainder, 661 were maimed in Gaza and 464 in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

    The report goes on to blame “armed Palestinian groups” for some of the Palestinian casualties, who were allegedly injured as a result of “accidents involving children who were near to military training exercises”. Assuming that this is the case, accidents of this nature cannot be considered “grave violations” as they are, by the UN’s own definition, accidental.

    The confusing breakdown of these numbers, however, was itself not accidental, as it allowed Guterres the space to declare that “should the situation repeat itself in 2022, without meaningful improvement, Israel should be listed.”

    Worse, Guterres’ report went further to reassure the Israelis that they are on the right track by stating that “so far this year, we have not witnessed a similar number of violations”, as if to suggest that the right-wing Israeli government of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid has purposely changed its policies regarding the targeting of Palestinian children. Of course, there is no evidence of this whatsoever.

    On June 27, Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP) reported that Israel “had been intensifying its aggression” against children in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the beginning of 2022. DCIP confirmed that as many as 15 Palestinian children were killed by Israeli forces in the first six months of 2022, almost the same number killed in the same regions throughout the entirety of the previous year. This number includes 5 children in the occupied city of Jenin alone. Israel even targeted journalists who attempted to report on these violations, including Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed on May 11, and Ali Samoudi, who was shot in the back on the very same day.

    Much more can be said, of course, about the besiegement of hundreds of thousands of children in the Gaza Strip, known as the ‘world’s largest open-air prison’, and many more in the occupied West Bank. The lack of basic human rights, including life-saving medicine and, in the case of Gaza, clean water, hardly suggests any measurable improvement in Israel’s track record as far as Palestinian children’s rights are concerned.

    If you think that the UN report is a step in the right direction, think again. 2014 was one of the most tragic years for Palestinian children where, according to a previous UN report, 557 children were killed and 4,249 were injured, the vast majority of whom were targeted during the Israeli war on Gaza. Human Rights Watch stated that the number of killed Palestinians “was the third-highest in the world that year”. Still, Israel was not blacklisted on the UN ‘List of Shame’. The clear message here is that Israel may target Palestinian children as it pleases, as there will be no legal, political or moral accountability for its actions.

    This is not what Palestinians are expecting from the United Nations, an organization that supposedly exists to end armed conflicts and bring about peace and security for all. For now, the message emanating from the world’s largest international institution to Manasra and the rest of Palestine’s children will remain unchanged: “We regret we failed to protect you.”

    The post The Shameful UN “List of Shame” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Cuba is one step closer to legalising same-sex marriage, strengthening women’s sexual and reproductive rights and guaranteeing the equitable distribution of domestic and care work in its draft new family code, reports Ian Ellis-Jones.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • [Source: telesurenglish.net]

    Women Have Made Particularly Significant Gains Under the Second Sandinista Government Since 2006

    Women, particularly those in the Third World, often find themselves with limited ability to participate in community organizations and political life because of the poverty and their traditional sex role imposes on them.

    On them falls sole responsibility to care for their children and other family members, especially when sick; they maintain the home, cook the meals, wash the dishes, the clothes, bathe the children, clean the house, mend the clothes. This labor becomes unending manual labor when households have no electricity (consequently, no lights, no refrigerator, no labor-saving electrical devices), and no running water.

    The burden of this work impedes the social participation, self-expectations, and education of the female population.

    Women in the Third World (and increasingly in the imperial First World) face problems of violence at home and in public, problems of food and water for the family, of proper shelter, and lack of health care for the family, and their own lack of access to education and, thus, work opportunities.

    In Nicaragua, before the 1979 Sandinista revolution, men typically fulfilled few obligations for their children; men often abandoned the family, leaving the care to women. It was not uncommon to hear the abuse that men inflicted on women, to see women running to a neighbor for refuge.

    It was not uncommon to encounter orphaned children whose mothers died in childbirth, since maternal mortality was high. Common illnesses were aggravated because there were few hospitals and, if there were, cash payment was demanded.

    After the 1979 Sandinista victory, living conditions for women dramatically improved, achievements the period of neoliberal rule (1990-2006) did not completely overturn. Throughout the second Sandinista period (2007- today), the material and social position of women again made giant steps forward.

    The greatest advances have been made by poor women in the rural areas and barrios, historically without safety, electricity, water and sanitation services, health care, or paved roads.

    The liberation women have attained during the Sandinista era cannot be measured only by what we apply in North America: equal pay for equal work, the right to abortion, the right to affordable childcare, freedom from sexual discrimination.

    Women’s liberation in Third World countries involves matters that may not appear on the surface as women’s rights issues. These include the paving of roads, improving housing, legalized land tenure, school meal programs, new clinics and hospitals, electrification, plumbing, literacy campaigns, potable water, aid programs to campesinos and crime reduction programs.

    Because half of Nicaraguan families are headed by single mothers, this infrastructure development promotes the liberation and well-being of women.

    Government programs that directly or indirectly shorten the hours of household drudgery free women to participate more in community life and increase their self-confidence and leadership. A country can have no greater democratic achievement than bringing about full and equal participation of women.

    Women participating in 1979 Sandinista revolution. [Source: wikipedia.org]

    Women’s Liberation Boosted with the FSLN’s Zero Hunger and Zero Usury Programs

    These programs, launched in 2007, raise the socio-economic position of women. Zero Hunger furnishes pigs, a pregnant cow, chickens, plants, seeds, fertilizers, and building materials to women in rural areas to diversify their production, upgrade the family diet, and strengthen women-run household economies.

    The agricultural assets provided are put in the woman’s name, equipping women to become more self-sufficient producers; it gives them more direct control and security over food for their children.

    This breaks women’s historic dependency on male breadwinners and encourages their self-confidence. The program has aided 275,000 poor families, more than one million people (of a total of 6.6 million Nicaraguans) and has increased both their own food security and the nation’s food sovereignty.

    Nicaragua now produces close to 90% of its own food, with most coming from small and medium farmers, many of them women. As Fausto Torrez of the Nicaraguan Rural Workers Association (ATC) correctly noted, “A nation that cannot feed itself is not free.”

    Market in Managua selling locally produced food. [Source: tortillaconsal.com]

    The Zero Usury program is a microcredit mechanism that now charges 0.5% annual interest, not the world microcredit average of 35%. More than 445,000 women have received these low-interest loans, typically three loans each.

    The program not only empowers women but is a key factor reducing poverty, unlocking pools of talent, and driving diversified and sustainable growth. Many women receiving loans have turned their businesses into cooperatives, providing jobs to other women. Since 2007, about 5,900 cooperatives have formed, with 300 being women’s cooperatives.

    Poverty has been reduced from 48% in 2007 to 25% and extreme poverty from 17.5% to 7%. This benefited women in particular, since single mother households suffered more from poverty. The Zero Hunger and Zero Usury programs have lessened the traditional domestic violence, given that women in poverty suffer greater risk of violence and abuse than others.

    Giving Women Titles to Property Is a Step Toward Women’s Liberation

    Since most Nicaraguans live by small-scale farming or by small business, possessing the title of legal ownership is a major concern. Between 2007 and 2021, the FSLN government has given out 451,250 land titles in the countryside and the city, with women making up 55% of the property-owners who benefited. Providing women with the legal title to their own land was a great step toward their economic independence.

    Infrastructure Programs Expand Women’s Freedom

    The Sandinista government has funded the building or renovation of 290,000 homes since 2007, free of charge for those in extreme poverty, or with interest-free long-term loans. This aided more than one million Nicaraguans, particularly single mothers, who head half of all Nicaraguan families.

    In 2006 only 65% of the urban population had potable drinking water; now 92% do. Access to potable water in rural areas has doubled, from 28% to 55%. This frees women from the toilsome daily walk to the village well to carry buckets of water home to cook every meal, wash the dishes and clothes, and bathe the children. Homes connected to sewage disposal systems have grown from 30% in 2007 to 57% in 2021.

    Now 99% of the population has electricity compared to 54% in 2006. As we know from experiencing electrical blackouts, electricity significantly frees our lives from time-consuming tasks. Street lighting has more than doubled, increasing security for all. Reliable home electricity enables the use of electrical labor-saving devices, such as a refrigerator.

    Today, high-speed internet connects and unites most of the country, reducing people’s isolation and lack of access to information. Virtually everyone has a cell phone, and free internet is now available in many public parks.

    Nicaragua’s road system is now among the best in Latin America and the Caribbean, given it has built more roads in the last 15 years than were built in the previous 200 years. Outlying towns are now connected to the national network. Now women in rural areas can travel elsewhere to work, sell their products in nearby markets, attend events in other towns, and take themselves or their children to the hospital. This contributes to the fight against poverty and the fight for women’s liberation.

    New roads on the outskirts of Ésteli, Nicaragua’s third-largest city. [Source: bcie.org]

    Better roads and housing, almost universal electrical and internet access, as well as indoor plumbing, greatly lessens the burdens placed on women homemakers and provide them with greater freedom to participate in the world they live in.

    The Sandinista Educational System Emancipates Women

    The humanitarian nature of the FSLN governments, as opposed to the disregard by previous neoliberal regimes, is revealed by statistics on illiteracy. When the FSLN revolution triumphed in 1979, illiteracy topped 56%.

    Within ten years they reduced it to 12%. Yet by the end of the 16-year neoliberal period in 2006, which dismantled the free education system, illiteracy had again risen to 23%. Today the FSLN government has cut illiteracy to under 4%.

    [Source: globalgiving.org]

    The FSLN made education completely free, eliminating school fees. This, combined with the aid programs for poor women, has allowed 100,000 children to return to school. The government began a school lunch program, a meal of beans and rice, to 1.5 million school and pre-school children every day.

    Pre-school, primary and secondary students are supplied with backpacks, glasses when needed, and low-income students receive uniforms at no cost. Now a much higher proportion of children are able to attend school, which provides more opportunities for mothers to work outside the home.

    [Source: creativesocietiesinternational.com]

    Nicaragua has established a nationwide free day-care system, now numbering 265 centers. Mothers can take their young children to day care, freeing them from another of the major hurdles to entering the workforce.

    Due to the vastly expanded and free medical system, the  Zero Hunger, Zero Usury and other programs, chronic malnutrition in children under five has been cut in half, with chronic malnutrition in children six to twelve cut by two-thirds. Now it is rare to see kids with visible malnutrition, removing another preoccupation from mothers.

    Schools and businesses never closed during the Covid pandemic, and Nicaragua’s health system has been among the most successful in the world addressing Covid. The country has the lowest number of Covid deaths per million inhabitants among all the countries of the Americas.

    Nicaragua has also built a system of parks, playgrounds, and other free recreation where mothers can take their children.

    Throughout the school system, the Ministry of Education promotes a culture of equal rights and non-discrimination. It has implemented the new subject “Women’s Rights and Dignities,” which teaches students about women’s right to a life without harassment and abuse and the injustices of the patriarchal system. Campaigns were launched to promote the participation of both mom and dad in a child’s education, such as emphasizing that attending school meetings or performances are shared responsibilities of both parents.

    Women receive their diplomas from the National Technology Institute INATEC, where 62% of those enrolled are women.  [Source:radiolaprimerisima.com]

    Sandinistas’ Free Health Care System Liberates Women 

    In stark contrast to Nicaragua’s neoliberal years, with its destruction of the medical system, and in contrast to other Central American countries and the United States with their privatized health care for profit, the Sandinistas have established community-based, free, preventive public health care. Accordingly, life expectancy has risen from 72 years in 2006 to 77 years today, now equal to the U.S. level.

    Health care units number more than 1,700, including 1,259 health posts and 192 health centers, with one-third built since 2007. The country has 77 hospitals, with 21 new hospitals built, and 46 existing hospitals remodeled and modernized. Nicaragua provides 178 maternity homes near medical centers for expectant mothers with high-risk pregnancies or from rural areas to stay during the last weeks of pregnancy.

    The United States is the richest country in the Americas, while Nicaragua is the third-poorest. Yet in the U.S. since 2010, more than 100 rural hospitals have closed, and fewer than 50% of rural women have access to pre-natal services within a 30-mile drive from their homes. This has disproportionately affected low-income women, particularly Black and Latino women.

    Nicaragua has equipped 66 mobile clinics, which gave nearly 1.9 million consultations in 2020. These include cervical and breast cancer screenings, helping to cut the cervical cancer mortality rate by 34% since 2007. The number of women receiving Pap tests has increased almost five-fold, from 181,491 in 2007 to 880,907 in 2020.

    In the pre-Sandinista era, one-fourth of pregnant women gave birth at home, with no doctor. There were few hospitals and pregnant women often had to travel rough dirt roads to reach a clinic or hospital. Now women need not worry about reaching a distant hospital while in labor because they can reside in a local maternity home for the last two weeks of their pregnancies and be monitored by doctors.

    In 2020, 67,222 pregnant women roomed in one of these homes, and could be accompanied by their mothers or sisters. As a result, 99% of births today are in medical centers, and maternal mortality fell from 115 deaths per 100,000 births in 2006 to 36 in 2020. These are giant steps forward in the liberation of women.

    Contrary to the indifference to women in the U.S., Nicaraguan mothers receive one month off work before their baby is born, and two months off after; even men get five days off work when their baby is born. Mothers also receive free milk for six months. Men and women get five paid days off work when they marry.

    The Question of Abortion Rights

    The law making abortion illegal, removing the “life and health of the mother” exception, was passed in the National Assembly under President Enrique Bolaños in 2006. There had been a well-organized and funded campaign by Catholics all over Latin America as well as large marches over the previous two years in Nicaragua in favor of this law.

    Enrique Bolaños in 2002. [Source: nytimes.com]

    The law, supported by 80% of the people, was proposed immediately before the presidential election as a vote-getting ploy by Bolaños. The Sandinistas were a minority in the National Assembly at the time, and the FSLN legislators were released from party discipline for the vote. The majority abstained, while several voted in favor. The law has never been implemented or rescinded.

    Since the Sandinistas’ return to power in 2007 no woman or governmental or private health professional has been prosecuted for any action related to abortion. Any woman whose life is in danger receives an abortion in government health centers or hospitals. Many places exist for women to get abortions; none has been closed or attacked, and none is clandestine. The morning-after pill and contraceptive services are widely available.

    Sandinista Measures to Free Women from Violence 

    Nicaragua has created 102 women’s police stations, special units that include protecting women and children from sexual and domestic violence and abuse. Now women can talk to female police officers about crimes committed against them, whether it be abuse or rape, making it easier and more comfortable for women to file complaints, receive counseling for trauma, and ensure that violent crimes against women are prosecuted in a thorough and timely manner.

    Nicaragua’s women in blue. [Source: breal.tv]

    Women make up 34.3% of the 16,399 National Police officers, a high number for a police department. For instance, New York City and Los Angeles police are 18% women and Chicago is 23%.

    The United Nations finds Nicaragua the safest country in Central America, with the lowest homicide rate, 7.2 per 100,000 (down from 13.4 in 2006), less than half the regional average of 19.

    It also has the lowest rate of femicides in Central America (0.7 per 100,000), another testament to the Sandinista commitment to ending mistreatment of women.  The government organizes citizen-security assemblies to raise consciousness concerning violence against women and to handle the vulnerabilities women face in the family and community. Mifamilia, the Ministry of the Family, carries out house-to-house visits to stress prevention of violence against women and sexual abuse of children.

    Nicaragua is the most successful regional country in combating drug trafficking and organized crime, freeing women from the insecurity that plagues women in places such as Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.

    Women’s Leadership in the Nicaragua Government

    The progress women have made during the second FSLN era is reflected in their participation in government. The 1980s’ Sandinista directorate contained no women. In 2007, the second Sandinista government mandated equal representation for women, ensuring that at least 50% of public offices would be filled by women, from the national level to the municipal.

    Today, 9 out of 16 national government cabinet ministers are women. Women head the Supreme Electoral Council, the Supreme Court, the Attorney General’s office, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and account for 60% of judges. Women make up half of the National Assembly, of mayors, of vice-mayors and of municipal council members. Women, so represented in high positions, provide a model and inspires all women and girls to participate in building a new society with more humane human relations.

    [Source: ipu.org]

    No Greater Democratic Victory Than the Liberation of Women

    The progress made in women’s liberation is seen in the Global Gender Gap Index: In 2007, Nicaragua ranked 90th on the index; by 2020, it had jumped to 5th place, exceeded only by Iceland, Norway, Finland and Sweden.

    Nicaragua is a country that has accomplished the most in liberating women from household drudgery and domestic slavery because of its policies favoring the social and political participation and economic advancement of poor women.

    Women have gained a women’s police commissariat, legal recognition of their property, new homes for abused women and for poor single mothers, economic programs that empower poorer women, abortion is not criminalized in practice, half of all political candidates and public office holders are women, extreme poverty has been cut by half, mostly benefiting women and children, domestic toil has been greatly reduced because of modernized national infrastructure, women have convenient and free health care.

    In their liberation struggle, Nicaraguan women are becoming ever more self-sufficient and confident in enforcing their long-neglected human rights. They are revolutionizing their collective self-image and ensuring their central role in building a new society. This betters the working class and campesinos as a whole by improving the quality of life for all and is a vital weapon in combating U.S. economic warfare.

    As Lenin observed, “The experience of all liberation movements has shown that the success of a revolution depends on how much the women take part in it.” Nicaragua is one more living example that a new world is possible.

    • First published in CovertAction Magazine

    The post Why is the Nicaraguan Government Demonized by both Liberals and Conservatives … first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • More than 800 children have been killed since my amendment to the Children’s Act was rejected in 2004, says David Hinchliffe. Plus a letter from Sharman Finlay

    Your editorial commending the Welsh government on its smacking ban (21 March) might have drawn attention to the NSPCC’s estimation that at least one child is killed each week in the UK, usually at the hands of a parent or carer. This appalling level of mortality most likely understates the actual figure but is undoubtedly directly connected to the fact that we have historically afforded children less protection in law.

    My amendment to ensure children had the same legal protection from assault as given to adults was not accepted by the then Labour government when the 2004 Children Act was passed, and I have a vivid recollection of the prime minister, Tony Blair, telling me at the time that the proposal was “a notch too far”. I have often wondered how many of the more than 800 children killed during the near two decades since might just possibly not have lost their lives if we had introduced that very modest and quite simple reform.
    David Hinchliffe
    Labour MP for Wakefield, 1987-2005

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Even if you still somehow believe the pandemic narrative, you surely recognize that the virus does not exactly threaten children. For example, in England, the child mortality rate from Covid-19 is 2 per million (0.0002%) across the whole population (assuming you also still somehow trust the insanely flawed PCR test).

    So… why the frenetic campaign to jab younger and younger humans with an untested experimental gene therapy meant for a disease that does not target them?

    Please allow me to introduce the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. This law states:

    No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death associated with the administration of a vaccine after October 1, 1988, if the injury or death resulted from side effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings.

    The law also set up something called the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program which created “an alternative remedy to judicial action for specified vaccine-related injuries.”

    Translation: Big Pharma is no longer liable for vaccine-related adverse events as long as the vaccine in question is “afforded the liability protections of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.”

    Surely you wonder: What vaccines are afforded such protections? Take a deep breath and read the primary requirement. The jab “must be recommended for routine administration to children or pregnant women by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).”

    So, let’s recap: The current Covid injectible products are free from liability because they fall under “emergency use authorization.” When they are officially approved, the vaccine makers lose such protections — unless those jabs are “recommended for routine administration to children.”

    Once that happens, Big Pharma can stick anything they want into our bloodstreams without any fear of legal or financial repercussions.

    All they need now is to get the government and the general population to be comfortable with an untested experimental gene therapy getting “recommended for routine administration to children.”

    How will they do that? Take a good look around at your TVs, your news feed, your daily conversations, and so on. It’s happening 24/7 and so far, it’s working.

    The powers-that-shouldn’t-be are counting on you to remain too scared and too uninformed to get in their way. Meanwhile, the only thing that can stop your children from being used as laboratory rats in a deadly but immensely lucrative con game is YOU. It’s now or never…

    The post Exposed: Why the mad rush to jab kids? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The role of the media is to inform, report and humanize the facts and figures that are more easily assigned to cells in a spreadsheet. Not to rewrite what is into what they feel will please their masters. Most “news” hours are spent rehashing ever-repeated rhetoric, “language that is intended to influence people and that may not be honest or reasonable.” – Merriam Webster.

    The key word is “humanize,” because we are human, after all, and if we considered the human consequences of our actions, and those of the people we elect and choose to serve and lead us, and report to us, life might be very different, especially for those who are most vulnerable.

    In this season, I can’t help but wonder if there is hope for humanity (or if there is any humanity left in the world) when it comes to so many of our precious gifts, our children. How many of them are hungry, sexually abused, maimed and killed so that the adults who control them can profit from their work, their sexual innocence, their very lives. While we talk the good game, we disregard the sins that are concealed by the powerful who perpetrate crimes against children, in our own country and around the world.

    196 countries have ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), but the United States has not.

    While our government helped draw up the human rights treaty that was adopted in 1989, we have failed to commit to its promise, which sets out the civil, political, economic, social, health and cultural rights of children worldwide. President Obama considered our lack of commitment to be an embarrassment, yet neither he nor any other president since that time requested that the Senate act to close the gap. And so, they haven’t. The reasons, of course, are mostly political.

    According to the UNCRC, those under the age of eighteen have the right to:

    • life, survival and development;
    • education that facilitates them to reach their full potential;
    • protection from abuse, violence or neglect;
    • express opinions and be heard; and
    • be raised by or have a relationship with their parents.

    The complete text can be read at Convention on the Rights of the Child text | UNICEF.

    The United States did sign two later protocols—the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict and the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography.

    Children are exploited and abused in every country of the world. The statistics on child trafficking are frightening. According to Save the Children, “Human trafficking can include forced labor, domestic servitude, organ trafficking, debt bondage, recruitment of children as child soldiers, and/or sex trafficking and forced prostitution.”

    Child Soldiers

    Eben Kaplan noted on the Council of Foreign Relations website that “Children are combatants in nearly three-quarters of the world’s conflicts and have posed difficult dilemmas for the professional armies they confront, including the United States.’ Yet moral reasons aside, compelling strategic arguments exist for limiting the use of child soldiers. When conflicts involving children end, experts say the prospects for a lasting peace are hurt by large populations of psychologically scarred, demobilized child soldiers. Parts of Africa, Asia, and South America risk long-term instability as generations of youth are sucked into ongoing wars.”

    A Reuters article lists the range of facts, including that “The recruitment and use of children as soldiers is one of the six U.N.-defined violations affecting children in times of war. The list also includes: the killing and maiming of children, sexual violence against children, child abductions, attacks against schools or hospitals and the denial of humanitarian access for children.

    Child Sexual Exploitation

    The FBI includes their investigative priorities in their Crimes Against Children/Online Predators — FBI as

    • Child abductions—the mysterious disappearance of a minor, especially a minor of tender years (12 or younger).
    • Contact offenses against children—production of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), sextortion, domestic travel to engage in sexual activity with children, and international travel to engage in sexual activity with children.
    • Sexual exploitation of children—online networks and enterprises manufacturing, trading, distributing, and/or selling CSAM.
    • Trafficking of CSAM—distribution or possession.
    • International parental kidnapping—wrongfully retaining a child outside the United States with the intent to obstruct the lawful exercise of parental rights.

    Sexual exploitation of children is the most heinous crime of all. The predators commit their crimes on beautiful estates or in luxury hotels, but also in vermin-infested slums and seedy backrooms. All should be treated with equal punishment. And it should be swift and severe.

    Child Laborers

    Children under 16 are allowed to work on their family’s farms, but not for unrelated employers. This would constitute “Oppressive child labor” … a condition of employment under which (1) any employee under the age of sixteen years is employed by an employer (other than a parent or a person standing in place of a parent employing his own child or a child in his custody under the age of sixteen . . .” The Fair Labor Standards Act Of 1938, As Amended 224-120 final Pdf.pdf (dol.gov)

    The truth is that 1 of every 7 children across the global are exploited in this way. A Facebrook “friend” put up a post that cut like a knife, mainly because every response was a thumbs up, a heart or a laugh emoji. It showed a large family sitting around their feast, with a caption that said, “Thank You Jesus.” Below was a photo of a young Latino boy picking lettuce with a caption that read, “De Nada.”

    Not only do young children work in the fields and climb trees all over the world to satisfy our insatiable appetites for exotic and out-of-season foods, many are forced to do so. Scott Simon’s piece for National Public Radio focuses on just one, Opinion: Do you know who’s picking your açaí berries? : NPR Simon describes how young Brazilian children climb high into the 60-ft. palms, so slender that they won’t bear the weight of a grown man. We can enjoy our healthy smoothie, but at what cost to these children. Slave labor is horrible, but child slave labor?

    2020 List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor (humantraffickingsearch.org) notes that, “The countries on the List span every region of the world. The most common agricultural goods listed are sugarcane, cotton, coffee, tobacco, cattle, rice, and fish. In the manufacturing sector, bricks, garments, textiles, footwear, carpets, and fireworks appear most frequently. In mined or quarried goods, gold, coal and diamonds are most common.”

    If you are a fan of spreadsheets, here is a very complete one provided by the U.S Department of Labor: 2020ListofGoodsExel.xlsx (live.com)

    The children who pick coffee beans to be sold at boutique food stores, and the children who are forced into hard labor and sex work while we spit out corporate billionaires by the dozen, are often starving. The UN World Food Program USA lists ten facts about childhood hunger, including that “Nearly Half of All Deaths Among Children Under 5 Are Caused by Hunger.” 10 Facts About Child Hunger in the World (wfpusa.org)

    The World Food Program USA also states that “Consistent with the mission of the U.N. World Food Programme, World Food Program USA works with U.S. policymakers, corporations, foundations and individuals to help provide financial and in-kind resources and develop policies needed to alleviate global hunger.” The nonprofit was awarded a Noble Peace Prize in 2020 for their “efforts to combat hunger, to improve conditions for peace in conflict zones and to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war.”

    World hunger near doubled in many regions during the worst of the COVID-19 crisis. Consider how the climate crisis, war and food shortages attributable to both could jack up that number. It will take more than a couple of well-functioning nonprofits to provide food access to the children who need it.

    The UNCRC defines the “Rights of the Child,” but these rights are not enforced by many of the countries that ratified it, as well as the United States, which did not. It is time to insist that the Senate take action and pass it with the two-thirds majority required and that we then use every means possible, including trade agreements, to enforce it at home and worldwide. It’s time to love and protect all of the world’s children.

    The post The Exploitation of Children in a Season that Celebrates Love first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • All embarked, the party launched out on the sea’s foaming lanes while the son of Atreus told his troops to wash, to purify themselves from the filth of the plague. They scoured it off, threw scourings in the surf and sacrificed to Apollo full-grown bulls and goats along the beaten shore of the fallow barren sea and savory smoke went swirling up the skies.

    Homer, The Iliad (1.365-370)

    The Biden administration’s announcement that Americans employed in companies with over 100 employees would be compelled to take an experimental gene therapy in explicit violation of the Nuremberg Code has opened a new front in the biofascist assault on democracy. Businesses and government agencies that fail to enforce this mandate will potentially face draconian fines. Should the oligarchy succeed in completely weaponizing health care, vaccine passports would undoubtedly become both pervasive and mandatory, but as Tucker Carlson pointed out during one of his recent monologues, it is also likely that dissidents would be handed over to the Cult of Psychiatry. This is not an uncommon practice in police states, and the pathologization of dissent has been ongoing in the West for quite some time now. Only through knowledge, compassion, and camaraderie can the forces of neo-Nazi medicine be outflanked. The days of medical Armageddon are upon us.

    As the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and its European counterpart unequivocally demonstrate, the Covid vaccine program is causing tremendous harm and should have been terminated many months ago. Even the efficacy of the vaccines is very much in doubt, as evidenced by soaring Covid case numbers in some of the most vaccinated places on earth, such as the Seychelles (see here and here), Israel (see here, here, here and here), Gibraltar and Iceland. As physician assistant Deborah Conrad pointed out in her interview with The HighWire, VAERS is so dysfunctional that many doctors and nurses are only vaguely aware of its existence.

    Addressing the “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Joseph Mercola, MD, writes on Mercola.com:

    In a June 29, 2021, interview, Fauci called the Delta variant ‘a game-changer’ for unvaccinated people, warning it will devastate the unvaccinated population while vaccinated individuals are protected against it. Alas, in the real world, the converse is turning out to be true, as the Delta variant is running wild primarily among those who got the Covid jab.

    As Dr. James Lyons-Weiler and other experts without ties to industry have noted, coronavirus vaccines have long had a poor safety record. Indeed, when scientists attempted to create a vaccine for SARS-CoV-1 the laboratory animals all died due to pathogenic priming.

    The vaccine mandates are causing middle class professionals to quit their jobs in droves, from highly trained fighter pilots, to large numbers of nurses leading to maternity wards being shuttered. In what is reminiscent of the anthrax vaccine (administered to the military despite the lack of both informed consent and FDA approval), army doctors are now observing serious adverse events in formerly healthy soldiers. The Covid vaccine drive has surpassed even the psychopathy of the Nazi doctors, as it would have been inconceivable to senior physicians in the Third Reich to give all of German society an experimental vaccine.

    In an incident that underscores how delusional the mass media has become, WXYZ-TV in Detroit, an ABC affiliate, reached out to people on Facebook for stories of Americans who died of Covid because they delayed getting vaccinated, but were instead inundated with thousands of stories of people who were killed or seriously injured by the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) gene therapies.

    Not only has a two-tier society emerged where the unvaccinated are being denied the right to work, attend university, eat out, go to sporting events, and enjoy the performing and visual arts; but another two-tier society has also emerged, one which has been evolving for quite some time now: the mega rich – for whom none of these draconian rules will apply – and everyone else. Video from a Democratic Party fundraiser hosted by Nancy Pelosi in Napa Valley has emerged showing affluent liberals rubbing shoulders unmasked while their brown servants wear masks. Masks and social distancing were apparently not required at the recent Met Gala in New York, where celebrities get to hobnob, have shallow conversations, and show off their outlandish costumes while millions of their countrymen wallow in unemployment, hopelessness, and despair.

    And it would seem that New York City mayor Bill de Blasio (whose real name incidentally is Warren Wilhelm Jr.) is not the only one who delights in imposing punitive measures on those who opt for the control group, with museums and concert halls enthusiastically embracing the heinous practice. The Guggenheim has even written on their website in conjunction with their vaccine requirement that “We focus on safety so you can immerse yourself in art.” (Thankfully, I have a lot of art books).

    What will transpire if the mandates remain in place? Will our leaders order their minions to shut off the water of the unvaccinated? Will workers and students be compelled to take an experimental AIDS vaccine or submit to weekly testing? These injunctions are unethical, discriminatory, and unconstitutional, as they transform inalienable rights into privileges which must be earned by participating in a dangerous medical experiment. Restaurants in Manhattan, which have some of the highest commercial rents in the world, are naturally reluctant to enforce these regulations, yet run the risk of being snitched on by Branch Covidian undercover operatives.

    Such an incestuous relationship has formed between the FDA, CDC, NIH, NIAID and the pharmaceutical industry, that going to the websites for these agencies invariably yields information that mirrors what is posted on the drug company websites. There is robust science indicating that natural immunity is stronger than vaccine-induced immunity. There is likewise compelling evidence that face masks do more harm than good, yet these facts continue to be ignored by the presstitutes – a gaggle of clowns also on industry payroll.

    When reporter Emerald Robinson asked White House principal deputy secretary Karine Jean-Pierre how doctors were testing for the Delta variant, Jean-Pierre became defensive, demanding that we stop asking questions and follow “the experts.” They know best after all, who when not registering vaccinated deaths as unvaccinated and artificially inflating the Covid death toll, are busy turning the country into a nation of opioid, heroin (the two are inextricably linked), fentanyl, barbiturate, benzodiazepine, and psychotropic drug addicts. (American doctors even once prescribed cocaine and heroin). Speaking at the Washington National Cathedral, our imaginary president, Dr. Fauci, said that he was sympathetic to Brits and Americans who are accustomed to certain post-Medieval rights and freedoms, “but now is the time to do what you’re told.”

    The FDA “approval” for the Pfizer Covid vaccine attempts to conflate EUA investigational agents with FDA-approved drugs, as FDA has not approved the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, which is still in use, but the Pfizer Comirnaty Covid vaccine, which isn’t even available. The FDA has argued that the two vaccines are indistinguishable from one another and that they can be used interchangeably, which is absurd. Any drug under the auspices of an EUA is by law experimental and cannot be mandated. Senator Ron Johnson wrote a letter to FDA Acting Commissioner Woodcock requesting clarification on this preposterous state of affairs.

    It is curious that Hydroxychloroquine is somehow safe as a maintenance drug for lupus, yet suddenly becomes dangerous when used to treat SARS-CoV-2, even if only taken for a very short period of time. Here is the website lupus.org:

    Given the drug’s many and varied beneficial effects and its excellent long-standing safety profile, most rheumatologists believe that Hydroxychloroquine should be taken by people with lupus throughout their lifetime. [Italics added]

    The FDA temporarily authorized the use of Hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 in March of 2020, but only with hospitalized patients. The FDA notice read as follows:

    Hydroxychloroquine sulfate may only be used to treat adult and adolescent patients who weigh 50 kg or more and are hospitalized with COVID-19, for whom a clinical trial is not available, or participation is not feasible.

    As Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, Dr. Peter McCullough, and others have noted, Covid protocols using Hydroxychloroquine and other zinc ionophores are most efficacious early in the disease process. In other words, the FDA denied permission for doctors to use a medication for outpatient care where it has been shown to significantly reduce hospitalization and death, but allowed the drug to be used for hospitalized patients where the disease has often spiraled out of control, thereby setting the drug up to fail. Dr. Simone Gold has argued that the prevalence of Hydroxychloroquine in Africa, where it is frequently obtainable as an over-the-counter drug for malaria treatment and prophylaxis, has played a significant role in protecting the continent from Covid.

    So eager were the Branch Covidians to torpedo Hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for SARS-CoV-2 that they conducted dangerous and unethical trials where patients were deliberately overdosed and given toxic quantities of the drug, likely causing some of the trial participants to die, and causing even far more deaths when public health agencies around the world advised (or in some instances, ordered) doctors to stop using a life-saving medication as a treatment for COVID-19.

    Writing for The Defender, the newsletter for Children’s Health Defense, Jeremy Loffredo points out that in addition to threatening the profits of the mRNA vaccines, Hydroxychloroquine posed a threat to the profits of Gilead, the manufacturer of Remdesivir:

    Since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, dozens of new studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of Hydroxychloroquine and its first cousin, Chloroquine, against Covid. These studies occurred in China, France, Saudi Arabia, Italy, India, New York and Michigan. However, such proof of Hydroxychloroquine’s benefit to patients with Covid has posed an existential threat to Gilead sales throughout the Covid outbreak.

    Remdesivir costs over $3,000 per treatment and has been linked to serious and potentially life-threatening side effects. Nevertheless, if a drug is profitable safety, necessity, and efficacy are disregarded. It becomes “the standard of care.”

    Having had their fill of demonizing Hydroxychloroquine, the presstitutes and pharmaceutical sock puppets turned their vitriol on another unpatentable drug, Ivermectin. Described as “a multifaceted drug of Nobel prize-honoured distinction” by the journal New Microbes and New Infections, Ivermectin has played a critical role in combating onchocerciasis, also known as river blindness. Writing for The Lancet, Michel Boussinesq, MD, PhD, points out that “Ivermectin has been widely used for 30 years to combat onchocerciasis and is rightly considered a wonder drug.” In African countries where Ivermectin is regularly taken as an anti-parasitic Covid deaths have been negligible. Elaborating on this point, Kenyan doctors Stephen Karanga and Wahome Ngare pointed out in a Klartext podcast that due to Ivermectin’s effectiveness in treating Covid they weren’t worried about SARS-CoV-2; their real concerns lay with car accidents, HIV, and malaria.

    Meanwhile, the FDA refuses to even acknowledge that Ivermectin can be used in humans, tweeting “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” (Yes, those are some of the smartest people in the world). This villainy is not without precedent, as millions of Americans were prescribed highly addictive opioids as opposed to safer and more inexpensive over-the-counter pain medications. The sacking of Canadian emergency physician Dr. Daniel Nagase, who was found guilty of saving the lives of his Covid patients with Ivermectin, underscores the fact that the elites will stop at nothing to prolong the pandemic.

    In addition to fomenting the cult-like notion that a vaccine is a magical elixir for which no risk-benefit analysis is needed, the media has played a critical role in deceiving hundreds of millions of people around the world into believing that Covid is equally dangerous to all patients irregardless of age and preexisting conditions. This, in turn, has led to Black Death levels of hysteria, as evidenced by unvaccinated locals in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh being forced to wear placards displaying the skull and crossbones.

    Physicians who attempt to treat Covid early using Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) and Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) protocols are being vilified as quacks and snake oil salesmen, while doctors who are killing staggering numbers of people through a combination of nontreatment and dangerous experimental drugs are hailed as heroes. In many ways, this is the essence of biofascism: care patients desperately need is denied them, while dangerous care is imposed through coercion – both monstrous violations of the oath to do no harm.

    It is not uncommon for physicians to prescribe FDA-approved drugs to treat conditions that are different from what the drug was initially intended for. This is referred to as “off-label use” or “off-label prescribing.” How will a high-risk patient who contracts Covid benefit from masks, social distancing, lockdowns and vaccines (even if they were safe and effective)? They need something that will ward off the inflammatory phase of the disease and keep the ventilator at bay. This suppression of early treatment options has failed to escape the attention of the Indian Bar Association, which has sought criminal charges against WHO Chief Scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan for making fallacious claims about Ivermectin to protect the Church of Vaccinology.

    A passage from the Rome Declaration, established at the Rome Covid Summit, and signed by over 10,000 doctors and scientists, states the following:

    WHEREAS, thousands of physicians are being prevented from providing treatment to their patients, as a result of barriers put up by pharmacies, hospitals, and public health agencies, rendering the vast majority of healthcare providers helpless to protect their patients in the face of disease. Physicians are now advising their patients to simply go home (allowing the virus to replicate) and return when their disease worsens, resulting in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary patient deaths, due to failure-to-treat;

    WHEREAS, this is not medicine. This is not care. These policies may actually constitute crimes against humanity.

    In the Age of Faucism, everyone who arrives at an American emergency room is being given a PCR test, and if it indicates that they have the virus (not unlikely considering the prevalence of false positives), their loved ones are summarily kicked out of the hospital, they are put into isolation, given drugs of dubious safety and efficacy, and even intubated. Dr. Jane Ruby has referred to these Covid obsessed hospitals as “the new ovens.” Furthermore, physicians are being threatened with revocation of their licenses should they be found guilty of “spreading misinformation” – a practice also commonly referred to as informed consent.

    Hitler’s physicians were fond of euthanizing the mentally ill, and it would appear that their heirs are equally enamored with the practice, as the mentally handicapped have been vaccinated by force and with armed police present in Los Angeles. Children in Toronto have been given the experimental jab, without parental permission, and in exchange for free ice cream, while irate parents were prevented from entering the grounds. Not to be outdone, whistleblowers from Aegis Living, an assisted living facility for the aged, have reported that residents have been “chemically restrained” and injected with the investigational mRNA biologicals without their knowledge. As Dr. Lee Merritt said in a talk with Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, “We have a whole society doing what we tried the Nazi doctors for.”

    As evidenced by the CDC vaccine schedule (a growing list of mandates coupled with liability protection for the manufacturer), and the fact that parents can be charged with “medical neglect” should they object to their children being placed on psychotropic drugs, the American public school system has long been in the grip of late-stage biofascism. To add insult to injury, toddlers are now being forced to wear masks and the mRNA biologicals are being injected into minors. Children’s Health Defense has reported that “Pfizer’s Covid vaccine could be rolled out to babies as young as 6 months in the U.S. this winter — under plans being drawn up by the pharmaceutical giant.”

    Australia offers another window into our future should we fail to save humanity from the hordes of Faucism. Indeed, this has become a country where farmers’ markets are shut down by riot police, senior health officials tell their countrymen not to talk to one another so as to prevent transmission of a virus, pregnant women are arrested in their pajamas for attempting to organize anti-lockdown rallies on the Internet, women are violently choked by sadistic goons for leaving their homes unmasked, young children are pepper sprayed and brutalized for committing the aforementioned sin, citizens are committed (or “sectioned” as they say in Britain) for questioning the official Covid narrative, rubber bullets are fired into crowds of informed consenters, and extreme forms of violence are unleashed against elderly protesters – acts of barbarity that have enraged the citizenry. Melbourne in particular has lost all semblance of checks and balances, with storm troopers being unleashed on the population, in harrowing scenes reminiscent of the Wehrmacht’s storming of Prague. (Granted, without the live rounds).

    Convinced that anyone who questions the veracity of the liberal media and the public health agencies is a “conspiracy theorist” (really a euphemism for “mentally ill”), neoliberals have already crossed the Rubicon and taken up the truncheon of authoritarianism. Undoubtedly, the official Covid narrative is deranged. Yet is it any more inane than “Trump’s white supremacist insurrection,” “Russia invaded Ukraine,” “the Russians hacked the election,” “Trump is Putin’s puppet,” and NATO was compelled to bomb Libya to smithereens “to save Benghazi?”

    Trapped in a vortex of amnesia and unreason, the neoliberal has been hoodwinked into believing that whatever the medical mullahs say is “the science;” and whatever the liberal media says is incontrovertible, irrefutable, and infallible; i.e., “reality.” Fauci’s contradictory statements, particularly with regard to the virulence of COVID-19 and his stance on masks, fail to diminish their fervor as they cannot even remember what they had for breakfast, let alone the tens of thousands of Americans killed by Vioxx or the over 400,000 Americans that lost their lives to the opioid epidemic.

    The liberals of the 1960s, who genuinely believed in the Nuremberg Code, would have regarded the Branch Covidians with contempt. What a pity that the ranks of these medical brownshirts are dominated largely by those who once idolized the likes of Bobby Kennedy and John F. Kennedy, yet now wallow in a pitiable state of moral and intellectual bankruptcy. It is true that conservative publications, such as The Washington Post, The Economist, and The Wall Street Journal are parroting similar propaganda with regard to Covid. However, as evidenced by Tucker Carlson’s show, the conservative media no longer speaks with one voice. Moreover, millions of conservatives no longer believe in the infallibility of the conservative media as liberals continue to believe in the infallibility of the liberal media.

    Ultimately, the Branch Covidians are the offspring of a union between a corporatized health care system that has grown increasingly hostile to informed consent, and a liberal class that stopped thinking when Bill Clinton was inaugurated and has come to regard senior officials in the liberal media and the public health agencies as gods. The mass psychosis of the Branch Covidians is inextricably linked with the mass psychosis of neoliberalism. Without the latter the former would have about as much societal impact as the Hare Krishnas.

    The Nazis divided humanity into the subhumans (Jews, Roma, political prisoners, and Slavs); the humans (allied European fascists and the Japanese); and the supermen (the Germans, or Aryans). For quite some time now, the American health care system has been mired in a multi-tier system which divides patients up into similar categories. In light of this boorishness, teaching hospitals have long been instructing trainees that care is to be doled out depending on what kind of insurance plan patients have. Privileged patients are granted the right to choose their own doctor while the less fortunate are confined to narrow networks. Humans are permitted to meet with an attending physician while the Untermenschen are sent to resident clinics. Unbeknownst to Nazi doctors, both past and present, there is no bioethics on-off switch. In what was foundational to the Blitzkrieg but could also explain their increasingly deranged decision making, much of the German military during World War II was regularly taking Pervitin, the predecessor to crystal meth, and doing so with the support of their own doctors.

    As the forces of darkness become increasingly desperate, liberals drown in an ocean of madness and sociopathy. Hypnotized by an oligarchy they have deified, while believing that they are still marching with Martin Luther King singing “Kumbaya My Lord” and “We Shall Overcome,” this faux-left movement bears a closer resemblance to the Democratic Party of the 1860s than the Democratic Party of the 1960s. Indeed, if the Branch Covidians succeed in destroying the citadel of informed consent, only one form of government will reign in the United States: slavery.

    The post The Branch Covidians are Waging War on Humanity first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • There seems to be a glaring illogic to official arguments about the need to vaccinate British children against Covid that no one in the corporate media wishes to highlight.

    Days ago the British government’s experts on vaccinations, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, withstood strong political pressure and decided not to recommend vaccinating children aged between 12 and 15. That was because the JCVI concluded that vaccination could not be justified in the case of children on health grounds.

    The implication was that the known health risks associated with vaccination for children – primarily from heart inflammation – outweighed the health benefits. The JCVI also indicated that there might be unknown, longer-term health risks too, given the lack of follow-up among young people and children who have already been vaccinated.

    But while the JCVI defied the government, they did not entirely ignore the political demands of them. They offered the government’s four chief medical officers a get-out clause that could be exploited to rationalise the approval of child vaccinations: they conceded that vaccinations might offer other, non-health benefits.

    Utilitarian arguments

    Predictably, this utilitarian justification for child vaccinations has been seized on by the British government. Here is the Guardian uncritically regurgitating the official position:

    There have also been concerns about the indirect effects of the virus on children. The biggest has been the disruption to schools, which had a severe impact on their mental and physical health, as well as their education.

    That, essentially, is why the four CMOs have said children aged between 12 and 15 should be eligible for the jab.

    They believe that being vaccinated will reduce the risk of disruption to school and extracurricular activities and the effect of this on their mental health and wellbeing.

    Let’s unpack that argument.

    Covid poses no serious threat to the overwhelming majority of children, the JCVI and the chief medical officers are agreed. (Those few children who are at risk can be vaccinated under existing rules.)

    But, according to the government, Covid has inflicted physical, mental and educational suffering on children because classrooms had to be shut for prolonged periods to protect vulnerable adults in the period before the adult population could be vaccinated.

    Now most adults, and almost all vulnerable adults, are vaccinated against Covid, offering them a significant degree of protection.

    But still children need to be injected with a vaccine that may, on balance, do more harm to their health than good.

    If this is the official argument, we should all be asking: Why?

    Two scenarios

    There are two potential scenarios for assessing this argument.

    The first:

    The vaccine works against transmission and severe illness in adults. Schools therefore no longer need to be shut down to protect the adult population. Adults are now largely safe – unless they have decided not to get vaccinated. And that, in turn, means that “indirect” harm to children’s mental and physical wellbeing caused by school closures should no longer be a consideration.

    If this is the case, then there are no grounds – either health ones or indirect, non-health ones – to justify vaccinating children.

    The second:

    The vaccine doesn’t stop transmission and severe illness, but it reduces some transmission and mitigates the worst effects of Covid. This is what the evidence increasingly suggests.

    If this is the case, then vaccinating children will not only fail to stop a proportion of them catching and transmitting Covid but it will also fail in its stated purpose: preventing the future closure of schools and the associated, indirect harms to children.

    Worse, at the same time vaccination may increase children’s risk of damage to their health from the vaccine itself, as the JCVI’s original conclusion implies.

    Just to be clear, as the “follow the science” crowd prepare yet again to be outraged, these are not my arguments. They are implicit in the official reasoning of the experts assessing whether to vaccinate children. They have been ignored on political grounds, because the government would prefer to look like it is actively getting us “back to normal”, and because it has chosen to put all its eggs in the easy (and profitable) vaccine basket.

    If vaccines are all that is needed to solve the pandemic, then there is no need to look at other things, such as the gradual dismantling of the National Health Service by successive governments, very much including the current one; our over-consumption economies; nutrient-poor diets promoted by the farming and food industries; and much else besides.

    Unadulterated racism

    There are, in fact, much more obvious, unequivocal reasons to oppose vaccinating children – aside from the matter that vaccination subordinates children’s health to the adult population’s wellbeing on the flimsiest of pretexts.

    First, vaccination doses wasted on British children could be put to far better use vaccinating vulnerable populations in the Global South. There are good self-interested reasons for us to back this position, especially given the fact that the fight is against a global pandemic in a modern world that is highly interconnected.

    But more altruistic – and ethical – concerns should also be at the forefront of discussions too. Our lives aren’t more important than those of Africans or Asians. To think otherwise – to imagine that we deserve a third or fourth booster shot or need to vaccinate children to reduce the risk of Covid deaths in the west to near-zero – is pure, unadulterated racism.

    And second, a growing body of medical reseach indicates that natural immunity confers stronger, longer-lasting protection against Covid.

    Given that the virus poses little medical threat to children, the evidence so far suggests they would be better off catching Covid, as apparently half of them already have.

    That is both because it serves their own interests by developing in them better immunity against future, nastier variants; and because it serves the interests of the adults around them – assuming (and admittedly it’s a big assumption) that the goal here is not to have adults dependent on endless booster shots to prevent waning immunity and enrich Pfizer.

    Worst of both worlds

    By contrast, the approach the British government is pursuing – and most of the corporate media is cheerleading – is the worst of both worlds.

    British officials want to treat Covid as a continuing menace to public health, one that apparently can never be eradicated. A state of permanent emergency means the government can accrue to itself ever increasing powers, including for surveillance, on the pretext that we are in an endless war against the virus.

    But at the same time the government’s implicit “zero tolerance” approach to Covid – in this case, a futile ambition to prevent any hospitalisations or deaths from the virus in the UK – means that the interests of British children, and populations in foreign countries we helped to impoverish through our colonial history, can be sacrificed for the good of adults in rich western countries.

    The combined effect of these two approaches is to foster a political climate in which western governments and the corporate media are better placed to replicate the colonial policy priorities they have traditionally pursued abroad but this time apply them to the home front.

    The supposed war against the virus – a war that children apparently must be recruited to fight on our behalf – rather neatly echoes the earlier, now discredited and unravelling “war on terror”.

    Both can be presented as threats to our civilisation. Both require the state to redirect vast resources to corporate elites (the “defence” industries and now Big Pharma). Both have led to widespread fear among the populace, making it more compliant. Both require a permanent state of emergency and the sacrifice of our liberties. Both have been promoted in terms of a bogus humanitarianism. And neither war can be won.

    Dog eat dog

    Recognising these parallels is not the same as denial, though the government and media have every interest to cultivate this as an assumption. There were and are terrorists, even if the term readily gets mangled to serve political agendas. And there is a dangerous virus that vulnerable populations need protection from.

    But just as the “terror” threat arose in response to – and to mask – our arrogant, colonial control over, and plundering of, other people’s resources, so this pandemic threat appears to have arisen, in large part, from our arrogant invasion of every last habitat on the planet, and our ever less healthy, consumption-driven lifestyles.

    At the beginning of the pandemic, I wrote an article that went viral called “A lesson coronavirus is about to teach the world“. In it, I argued that our capitalist societies, with their dog-eat-dog ideologies, were the least suited to deal with a health crisis that required solidarity, both local and global.

    I noted that Donald Tump, then the US president, was trying to secure an early, exclusive deal for a “silver bullet” – a vaccine – whose first doses he planned to reserve for Americans as a vote-winner at home and then use as leverage over other states to reward those who complied with his, or possibly US, interests. The planet could be divided into friends and foes – those who received the vaccine and those who were denied it.

    It was a typically Trumpian vanity project that he did not realise. But in many ways, it has come to pass in a different fashion and in ways that have the potential to be more dangerous than I could foresee.

    Divide and rule

    The vaccine has indeed been sold as a silver bullet, a panacea that lifts from our shoulders not just the burden of lockdowns and masks but the need for any reflection on what “normal life” means and whether we should want to return to it.

    And just as Trump wanted to use vaccine distribution as a tool of divide-and-rule, the vaccination process itself has come to serve a similar end. With the quick roll-out of vaccines, our societies have almost immediately divided between those who demand vaccine passports and mandates as the price for inclusion and those who demand the protection of basic liberties and cultivation of social solidarity without conditions.

    In popular discourse, of course, this is being spun as a fight between responsible vaxxers and irresponsible anti-vaxxers. That is more divide-and-rule nonsense. Those in favour of vaccination, and those who have been vaccinated, can be just as concerned about the direction we are heading in as the “anti-vaxxers”.

    Fear has driven our division: between those who primarily fear the virus and those who primarily fear western elites whose authoritarian instincts are coming to the fore as they confront imminent economic and environmental crises they have no answers for.

    Increasingly, where we stand on issues surrounding the pandemic has little to do with “the science” and relates chiefly to where each of us stands on that spectrum of fear.

    Hoarding impulse

    The vaccination of children highlights this most especially, which is why I have chosen to focus on it. We want children vaccinated not,, because the research suggests they need it or society benefits from it, but because knowing they are vaccinated will still our fear of the virus a little more.

    Similarly, we want foreigners denied the vaccine – and that is the choice we make when we prioritise our children being vaccinated and demand booster shots for ourselves – because that too will allay our fears.

    We hoard the vaccinations, just as we once did toilet paper. We try to fortify our borders against the virus, just as we do against “immigrants”, even though the rational part of our brain knows that the virus will lap up on our shores, in new variants, unless poorer nations are in a position to vaccinate their populations too.

    Our fears, the politicians’ power complexes and the corporations’ profit motives combine to fuel this madness. And in the process we intensify the dog-eat-dog ideology we call western civilisation.

    We turn on each other, we prioritise ourselves over the foreigner, we set parent against child, we pit the vaccinated against the unvaccinated – all in the name of a bogus humanitarianism and solidarity.

    The post In the name of humanitarianism, Covid is crushing local as well as global solidarity first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Reason can wrestle and overthrow terror.

    — Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis

    Medical ethics in the West has long been predicated on informed consent, the oath to do no harm, the notion that good health care is a human right, and the search for scientific truth free from skullduggery and censorship. These tenets are not only integral to a sound health care system but are foundational to a civilized society. Lamentably, each of these sacrosanct principles is anathema to the medical industrial complex. For we have entered the Age of Faucism.

    In “Why do patients hate going to the doctor?” by Maheswari Raja, MD, the author reiterates the establishment medical narrative, that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with our health care system, and that the problem is the American patient:

    And the truth is that the doctor’s office is an uncomfortable place. It is where one answers the most intimate questions and speaks their most intimate fears — where they have to face the reality of the consequences of their behaviors and misjudgments.

    Will physicians devoid of a moral compass, the private health insurance companies, and the pharmaceutical industry ever face the consequences of their “behaviors and misjudgments?” No less delusional and absurd, Dana Hassneiah, MD, writes in KevinMD:

    Most people in other jobs would probably not care to help a person who is indifferent and doesn’t want to help himself. But in medicine, your knowledge and morals make you the desperate person in the encounter.

    These superior morals were on display in the Covid vaccine propaganda video where doctors tell patients to “Just grow the f**k up and get the vaccine,” an obscenity emblematic of the growing push towards severing ties with the Hippocratic Oath.

    Embedded in Faucism are three cults: the Cult of Psychiatry, the Church of Vaccinology, and the Branch Covidians. These branches of American pseudo-medicine inhabit a world of authoritarianism, zealotry, and unreason, and are anchored in a deep-seated contempt for informed consent and the oath to do no harm. Just as Europeans who were suspected of deviating from a once supremely powerful church were labeled heretics, necromancers, and accused of witchcraft and sorcery, those that have the temerity to question the pharmaceutical priesthood are denounced as “conspiracy theorists,” “anti-vax,” and “anti-science.” Whether it be Wahhabism, the Cultural Revolution in China, the Nazis, or the Christian fundamentalists of 16th and 17th century Europe, tyranny needs a dogma, and the rapacious corporatization of medicine coupled with the neoliberal belief in the infallibility of the liberal media have spawned Faucism.

    The Cult of Psychiatry is grounded in despotism and dogmatism, as virtually all of the diseases in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) can neither be scientifically tested nor proven. (Consider how depraved a physician would have to be to genuinely believe that “oppositional defiant disorder” is a real medical diagnosis). The more mental illnesses are invented, the more psychiatrists are able to create drug addicts for the pharmaceutical industry. Undoubtedly, there are sinister elements within the intelligence services that are delighted with this Huxleyan state of affairs. While there will always be some good people in psychiatry such as Peter Breggin, MD, the field is infested with sociopaths that regard every human emotion as a disease. Indeed, the Britney Spears tragedy offers a harrowing example of psychiatric sadism and cruelty.

    When a new vaccine is in production, one should always ask three questions: Is the vaccine necessary? Is it safe? And is it efficacious? The Church of Vaccinology is founded on the notion that every vaccine is necessary, safe, and effective, and history has repeatedly shown this to be a myth going back to the Cutter Incident. Since vaccination constitutes a significant medical intervention which poses an element of risk, why should a vaccine be produced for an illness which is treatable? And if vaccines are unfailingly innocuous, why is there a need for coercion? Alas, wherever there are insatiable pharmaceutical cabals one is sure to find marketing masquerading as science.

    The Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) granted for the mRNA vaccines is contingent on there being no treatments for Covid. Yet this claim is fallacious, as Ivermectin (see herehere, here and here) and Hydroxychloroquine (see hereherehere, here and here) have indeed shown efficacy in the treatment of COVID-19, particularly if these regimens are deployed early in the disease process. Moreover, unlike with the mRNA vaccines, Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin have a strong safety profile, the former being approved by the FDA in 1955, and the latter being on the World Health Organization Model List of Essential Medicines. (The CDC’s website states that “Hydroxychloroquine can be prescribed to adults and children of all ages. It can also be safely taken by pregnant women and nursing mothers”). Those who spurn the studies which demonstrate that Covid is treatable because this would contradict the pharmaceutical priesthood are no less indoctrinated than those who once insisted that the Earth couldn’t possibly go around the Sun because this contradicted the teachings of the church. Terrified of excommunication, the proselytized refuse to look through the telescope. They refuse to see.

    Unlike the mRNA hucksters, the physicians of the FLCCC Alliance and America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) have treated thousands of Covid patients and have real-world experience in successfully treating COVID-19. Does this mean that they will be able to save every life? No, it does not. There are Americans that die every year from influenza and pneumonia. Has that led to calls to turn the country into an enormous prison?

    The “vaccines” have not been proven to prevent transmission and there have been thousands of so-called “breakthrough cases.” In “Are vaccines driving the surge in new Covid infections?” Marco Cáceres points out that “In the UK, Israel, Chile and other countries with high vaccination rates, Covid infections among the fully vaccinated are outpacing those in the unvaccinated….” Israel’s Channel 13 has reported that in the Herzog Medical Center in Jerusalem the overwhelming majority of hospitalized Covid patients are fully vaccinated. Perhaps we can take delight in knowing what the vaccines have been proven to do: inflict staggering amounts of pain and suffering.

    It is likely that FDA, CDC, and NIH have known for quite some time about the efficacy of Hydroxychloroquine, as an article about SARS-CoV-1 appeared in Virology Journal titled “Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread,” and was published in 2005. Of course, when science gets in the way of profit-making, one can always publish fraudulent papers which later have to be retracted. As Dr. Peter McCullough has repeatedly emphasized, the public health agencies instructed doctors to send patients home without treatment when they were sick with Covid, as opposed to establishing protocols for how to treat patients early and aggressively with drugs that were already FDA approved. How many thousands died as a result of this malfeasance?

    The 1976 swine flu vaccine program was terminated after it caused the death of dozens of Americans and gave hundreds of Americans Guillain-Barré syndrome. Data on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) indicate that there have been thousands of Covid vaccine deaths in the US, and yet the authorities continue with this unprecedented push to get the entire planet vaccinated. It is important to note that VAERS is notoriously dysfunctional and captures only 1% to 10% of the actual data. Interestingly, the CDC recently decided to slash the VAERS death toll for Covid vaccines from 13,068 to 6,018 citing “foreign reports.”

    Distinguished scientists and physicians such as Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, Dr. Ryan Cole, Dr. Sucharit BhakdiDr. Harvey RischDr. Mike YeadonDr. Roger HodkinsonDr. Tess Lawrie, and doctors Stephanie Seneff and Greg Nigh have expressed concern over the growing number of mRNA vaccine adverse events and the lack of long-term safety data. The cultlike notion that one must submit to the collective through masking and vaccination is antithetical to the principle of bodily autonomy and mirrors the sophistry used to defend female genital mutilation. It is also scientific hogwash, for if the vaccine confers immunity what difference does it make if one’s friends, colleagues, and neighbors are vaccinated or unvaccinated?

    Branch Covidian dogma mirrors the Nazi medical ethos, which maintained that any medical atrocity can be justified if done for the “greater good.” For instance, if an SS doctor were to place a Russian prisoner of war in a tub of ice water, monitor his vital signs and note how long it took for him to die, and then autopsy the body, all in an attempt to glean information that could ostensibly be used to aid German pilots and sailors, this would be justified by the medical community of the Third Reich as acceptable and executed within their medical guidelines. In this same vein, Branch Covidians would argue that the catastrophic impact of the lockdowns, the growing numbers of Covid vaccine deaths and injuries, and the deleterious consequences of the mask mandates are justified, as these measures represent inevitable collateral damage integral to “flattening the curve” and “preventing emergency rooms from being overwhelmed.” (A remarkable case of sophistry, particularly when one considers the fact that Ivermectin can be used prophylactically). According to Children’s Health Defense, “Nearly 67 million [Americans] lost work between Mar. 21 and Oct. 7, 2020.” And this, for a virus which is treatable and has a 99.7% survival rate! As the public health agencies of FDA, CDC, NIH, and NIAID (which should really be called corporate health agencies) have long fallen victim to regulatory capture, they have no incentive to impose stringent safety guidelines.

    In England, more minors have been lost to suicide than to “the coronavirus,” while thousands of American children have suffered serious adverse events from the experimental inoculations (see herehere, here, here and here), even as their risk of dying from Covid is almost statistically zero. Clearly, the Nuremberg Code is being egregiously violated, as EUA biologicals are by definition experimental. Bemoaning this deterioration of bioethical norms, one of the inventors of mRNA technology, Robert Malone, MD, writes in TrialSite News that “The Geneva Convention, the Helsinki declaration, and the entire structure which supports ethical human subjects research requires that research subjects be fully informed of risks and must consent to participation without coercion.”

    When a powerful pharmaceutical company is impatient to unleash a blockbuster drug they are invariably indifferent to safety, necessity, and efficacy. This apathetic attitude towards basic principles of medical ethics has been glaringly on display with regard to the overprescribing of benzodiazepines, the Vioxx disaster, the opioid epidemic, the psychotropic drug epidemic, anthrax vaccine (also an EUA), Gardasil vaccine, the 2009 Pandemrix vaccine for H1N1, and fen-phen, drugs and vaccines which have destroyed countless lives and some of which are still on the market. Bear in mind that the medical institutions that are responsible for these drug regulatory catastrophes – some of the worst in human history – are “the experts.”

    College students are generally kept in the dark about the many illegal wars of aggression, both covert and overt, that have been perpetrated by the CIA and the Pentagon. This is even more common with the indoctrination of military academy cadets and political science majors. Likewise, most medical graduates know nothing about the history of the pharmaceutical industry, rendering them incapable of placing contemporary events in their appropriate historical context. This intellectual amnesia explains how we ended up with an army of doctors that will happily hand out opioids, psychotropic drugs, benzodiazepines, and Covid vaccines as if they were gummy bears. Those among us that can no longer distinguish between real medical care, rooted in informed consent, the oath to do no harm, and medical scientific integrity, and Nazi medical care, where the powers of modern medicine are weaponized and used to enslave, debase, and violate have lost their humanity.

    Parents are consistently told by pediatricians that every vaccine is “safe and effective” and that no risk-benefit analysis is needed. As the ghosts of history emerge from the shadows, these claims ring hollow. Granted, this may be true with regard to certain immunizations, but the dramatic surge in the number of mandatory vaccines on the CDC schedule, combined with the treasonous behavior of the public health agencies, and the broad immunity granted for the vaccine manufacturers, has brought us to a precipice from which we are staring at an abyss of tyranny. Indeed, the Church of Vaccinology isn’t interested in public health. They are interested in money and power.

    The notion of vaccine inviolability is laid to rest in Dr. Richard Moskowitz’s masterpiece Vaccines: A Reappraisal. Concluding chapter 9, he writes:

    Population-based surveys have shown a linear, directly proportional relationship between the number of vaccinations administered in the first year of life and the infant mortality rate, as well as the rate of hospitalizations and emergency room visits during the same period. Other surveys have shown that children vaccinated according to the CDC schedule exhibit higher rates of asthma and other childhood diseases and generally have poorer health than those who were ‘undervaccinated,’ while those children who were never vaccinated at all seemed by far the healthiest in a number of typical parameters.

    As discussed in The Virus and the Vaccine, by Debbie Bookchin and Jim Schumacher, millions of Americans were given polio vaccines tainted with the monkey virus SV40, a contaminant initially dismissed as incidental by our public health agencies, but which was later shown to be oncogenic. There is also the unresolved yet compelling hypothesis of Edward Hooper, laid out in his tome The River, where he argues that the HIV pandemic began when the CHAT oral polio vaccine was deployed in the Belgian Congo, an apartheid state, and that chimpanzee kidneys contaminated with SIV, the cousin to HIV, were used in this process, meaning that the origins of HIV would be iatrogenic. Nevertheless, we mustn’t listen to heathens like Hooper who “spread misinformation,” are likely working for the Russians, and are possibly even terrorists.

    The totalitarian mentality of the medical establishment is evidenced not only by their lack of humanism and compassion, but by their disdain for checks and balances. Consider the bizarre language on the CDC’s website, where they repeatedly speak of “orders” that they allegedly have the authority to hand down. And who, pray tell, do they take “orders” from? As Senator Ronald Johnson pointed out in his discussion with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in affiliation with Children’s Health Defense, the government’s response to SARS-CoV-2 has been marked by a dangerous censorship and a growing antipathy towards openness and debate.

    The term “anti-vaxxer” is designed to disparage and denigrate those who reject biofascism. In actuality, these people are “pro-informed-consenters.” (Were those who expressed outrage over thalidomide-induced teratogenesis “anti-drug?”) They also resent the fact that the drug companies cannot be sued should their vaccines inflict long-lasting harm, which has been the case in the US since the passage of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986, a dastardly piece of legislation which gave the drug companies permission to use children as laboratory ferrets. Furthermore, the drug companies have liability protection for any adverse event caused by a Covid vaccine under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP), providing the pharmaceutical industry with multiple layers of immunity. The drug companies were afforded no liability protection for opioids and Vioxx, yet when it comes to vaccines where they are indemnified “they suddenly find Jesus,” as Robert Kennedy Jr. is fond of saying.

    For decades, informed consent has been under a sustained and ruthless assault. From threatening to call Child Protective Services should parents not want their children on psychotropic drugs, to failing to communicate the dangers of opioids and benzodiazepines, to practice pelvic exams performed on anesthetized patients by trainees, to the imposition of unwanted observers during physician office visits, to the violation of do-not-resuscitate orders, to the nondisclosure of long-term chemotherapy side effects, to the growing list of mandatory vaccines of dubious safety and efficacy, informed consent is being systematically and methodically dismantled. The mask mandates, lockdowns, and the relentless pressure to participate in a dangerous medical experiment are merely a perpetuation of this barbarism. Moreover, masks and vaccines are inextricably linked, for if a restaurant, bar, library, museum, school, or workplace has the power to deny you entry due to being unmasked then they will have the power to deny you entry should you be unvaccinated (an unfolding reality in New York City), as a critical precedent for medical martial law has been established.

    As pediatrician and pulmonologist Sterling Simpson, MD, pointed out in his interview with The Last American Vagabond, the majority of masks people are using are not FDA approved, which underscores the fact that they do not constitute a real medical device. In other words, the risks, such as extreme isolation, sensory deprivation, mass hysteria, traumatized children (some of whom are showing signs of cognitive impairment), and people becoming acidotic, can easily outweigh the benefits. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test is likewise not FDA approved. McBride and Locricchio write for The Defender:

    All COVID vaccines, COVID PCR and antigen tests, and masks are merely EUA-authorized, not approved or licensed, by the federal government. Long-term safety and efficacy have not been proven.

    EUA products are by definition experimental, which requires people be given the right to refuse them. Under the Nuremberg Code, the foundation of ethical medicine, no one may be coerced to participate in a medical experiment. Consent of the individual is ‘absolutely essential.’

    To underscore the dangers of rushing a vaccine to market in under a year, it took Sanofi Pasteur twenty years to create the dengue vaccine, Dengvaxia, which ultimately led to antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), a phenomenon whereby vaccination inadvertently facilitates viral replication. The formalin-inactivated (FI) Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) vaccine used in the 1960s is another example of ADE. Dr. Malone and Doctors for COVID Ethics have warned that this very scenario could unfold with the mRNA vaccines. (A new vaccine for RSV is expected to be extremely profitable and pharmaceutical companies are presently jockeying for position). Perhaps it is those who are responsible for pushing inadequately tested vaccines that are responsible for “spreading misinformation” and “stoking vaccine hesitancy.”

    If a government can force you to take an experimental drug, what will prevent them from forcing you to have exploratory brain surgery, a tracheotomy, or gender reassignment surgery? The Nazification of American medicine is magnified tenfold in the public schools, where sorcery has usurped science and the three death cults are bludgeoning minds, bodies, and spirits, and doing so in an environment of brutality and unmitigated lawlessness.

    The interminable fearmongering about all the different variants is simply a more rabid and maniacal version of what precipitated the 1976 swine flu, 2003 smallpox, and 2009 H1N1 vaccination programs. Keep that in mind the next time you’re told to “follow the science.” Another preposterous canard being parroted by the media is that naturally acquired immunity is somehow inadequate and pales in comparison with vaccine-induced immunity. As Dr. Charles Hoffe has pointed out, patients that have immunity for SARS-CoV-1 have immunity for SARS-CoV-2, despite the fact that there is a 20% difference between these two viruses, while the different Covid variants have less than a 1% difference between them.

    Can any amount of money restore fulfillment and tranquility to a perfidious soul? Let us reflect on the words of Imogen in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline:

    Thus may poor fools
    Believe false teachers: though those that are betray’d
    Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor
    Stands in worse case of woe. (III.iv.)

    A collection of clowns, witch hunters, Eichmanns, and snickering snake oil salesmen, the Branch Covidians, together with the Church of Vaccinology and the Cult of Psychiatry, are hammering away at two of the most vital, indispensable, and irreplaceable pillars of democracy: informed consent and the First Amendment.

    As relationships crumble and the pressure to succumb to the primordial darkness grows, the chasm inexorably widens between the moral and the amoral, the sentient and the nonsentient, the wise and the wicked. Should the citadel of liberty fall to the hordes of Faucism, we will descend into a long and terrible night before our descendants reclaim its resurrection.

    The post America in an Age of Faucism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Alliance for Youth Justice (AYJ) has published a damning report revealing the “devastating” impacts of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic on children in the youth justice system. The AYJ’s wide-ranging findings include safeguarding concerns, youth offending institutions depriving children of education and contact with their families – “amounting to solitary confinement”  – and delays in court proceedings. The report argues that marginalised and disadvantaged children and young people continue to bear the brunt of worsening conditions in England and Wales’ youth justice system.

    Children’s rights issues

    The AYJ highlights “safeguarding concerns” for all children as a result of lockdown measures, suggesting that the state and its institutions have failed to prioritise children’s rights in their response to the pandemic. It adds that children in the youth justice system – particularly those from marginalised and disadvantaged backgrounds – have felt the consequences of this most sharply.

    The report shows “a consistent theme about the lack of information, understanding and focus on children during the pandemic”.  It adds that the government “has often failed to distinguish between its approach to adults and children” in the justice system.

    Highlighting that disadvantaged and marginalised children and young people have ‘suffered most’, AYJ director Pippa Goodfellow said that as a result of the pandemic:

    Children’s exposure to abuse, exploitation and violence have continued or increased, while the capacity of services has been severely impeded. 

    A system ‘struggling to cope’

    In particular, the AYJ draws attention to the entire youth justice system’s inadequate response to the pandemic. Highlighting the urgent need for measures to reduce the number of children entering the youth carceral state, it sets out that:

    From decisions to arrest, divert or prosecute children in the community, to remand and sentencing, there was a clear need identified to work to reduce the number of children passing through a system that is struggling to cope.

    It also points out that although the overall number of children in custody has reduced, the proportion of children on remand has risen. The report adds that organisations have criticised “unambitious custody release schemes… for being completely ineffective”.

    The AYJ further raises concerns that delays in courts are making it difficult for children to receive timely charging decisions, leaving many in limbo. Indeed, as of November 2020, backlogs in the youth courts had almost doubled as a result of lockdown closures. It adds that although the pandemic has exacerbated delays, this “should be seen in the context of a system already under severe strain”. This comes after a report by the Youth Justice Legal Centre (YJLC) explaining that delays in charging and court hearings due to coronavirus are leading to more children being tried in adult courts upon turning 18.

    The AYJ sets out that most children in custody have experienced “awful conditions for months on end”. It explains that institutions have deprived many children of the “education, visits and contact” they are entitled to, “amounting to solitary confinement”. The AYJ is calling on institutions to ‘assess and support’ children’s physical, mental and emotional health as a result of this limited social contact.

    Towards a collaborative approach

    Calling for urgent action across children’s services to prevent a further increase in the negative impacts on the pandemic on the most vulnerable children, Goodfellow concluded:

    Concerted, coordinated action, with significant investment will be required to mitigate the negative consequences for children in the youth justice system, and to prevent criminalising vulnerable children who have experienced the most devastating harms of the pandemic.

    The AYJ’s damning report reflects the numerous calls from youth justice and children’s rights organisations urging the government to prioritise children’s rights and transform all youth systems and services in England and Wales. Campaigners have warned that factors in the education system, such as the increasing presence of police in schools and continued excessive and disproportionate school exclusions, will work to further streamline the UK’s school-to-prison pipeline.

    Others have highlighted that new Knife Crime Prevention Orders will support further expansion of the youth carceral state. And that plans set out in the government’s proposed draconian Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill will likely further expand the UK’s youth prison population. Proposed measures include ‘secure schools’ and harsher sentences for children and young people who are in trouble with the law. Many anticipate that – once more – marginalised and disadvantaged children and young people will bear the brunt of these punitive measures.

    Featured image via Kat J/Unsplash

    By Sophia Purdy-Moore

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Recent media coverage of Israel and Palestine, not least by BBC News, has been full of the usual deceptive propaganda tropes: Israel is ‘responding’ or ‘reacting’ to Palestinian ‘provocation’ and ‘escalation’; Palestinian rockets ‘killed’ Israelis, but Palestinians ‘have died’ from unnamed causes; Israel has ‘armed forces’ and ‘security forces’, but Hamas has ‘militants’. And, as ever, Palestinians were killed in far greater numbers than Israelis. At least 248 Palestinians were killed by Israeli bombardment in Gaza, including 66 children. Palestinian rocket fire killed 12 in Israel, including one child.

    Imagine if the BBC reported:

    Palestinian security forces responded after Israeli militants enforcing the apartheid occupation attacked and injured Palestinian worshippers.

    BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen referred night after night on BBC News at Ten to ‘a war between Israel and Hamas’, a version of events pushed hard by Israel. As John Pilger said in a recent interview, ‘Bowen knows that’s wrong’. This is no war. In fact, the world has witnessed a massive attack by one of the world’s most powerful, lethal militaries, armed and supported to the hilt by the US (which sends $3.8 billion in military aid to Israel each year) and western allies, imposing a brutal occupation and deliberately subjecting the Palestinian civilian population to death, violence, terror and appalling hardship.

    Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned early on that heavy Israeli bombing was pushing Gaza to the edge of catastrophe:

    ‘The Israeli bombing is incredibly heavy and stronger than previous bombing campaigns. Relentless bombing has destroyed many homes and buildings all around us. It’s not safe to go outside, and no one is safe inside, people are trapped. Emergency health workers are taking incredible but necessary risks to move around.’

    On 19 May, the 10th day of intense Israeli bombardment of Gaza, the BBC News website carried headlines:

    ‘Israel targets Hamas chiefs’

    And:

    ‘Israel targets Gaza militants’

    So, why was Israel killing so many noncombatants, including children? Why were residences being flattened? The United Nations estimated that Israel had demolished 94 buildings in Gaza, comprising 461 housing and commercial units. Why were hospitals and clinics suffering so much damage? And buildings where media organisations were based?

    Why were there Israeli airstrikes in the area of the MSF clinic in Gaza City, killing at least 42 people including 10 children? An orphanage was also destroyed.

    The massacre was ‘one of the most horrific crimes’ Israel has committed during its ongoing war against the people of Gaza, according to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor who added that:

    ‘the attack was not an isolated incident, but another example of Israel’s systematic policy that we have witnessed over the past six days.’

    As Tamara Nasser observed in a piece on the Electronic Intifada website, Israel was unable to substantiate its claim that ‘Hamas military intelligence were using the building’ when pressed to do so by US public radio network NPR.

    Nasser added:

    ‘Even if that Israeli claim were true, under the laws of war, Israel’s destruction of entire buildings would be wholly disproportionate.

    ‘Rather, Israel’s mass destruction of buildings and infrastructure appears to fit the pattern of the Dahiya Doctrine – named after its 2006 destruction of the southern suburb of Beirut.

    ‘The goal is to deliberately inflict such pain and suffering on the civilian population and society at large as to deter anyone from resisting against Israel’s occupation. This can be prosecuted as a war crime.’

    It also serves as a useful definition of terrorism.

    Christophe Deloire, Secretary General of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), said via Twitter:

    ‘What the Israeli army asserts, namely that the alleged presence of Hamas in the buildings would make them legitimate military objectives is absolutely false from a legal point of view, since they also house civilians, such as the media.’

    He added:

    ‘Even assuming that the Israeli fire was necessary (which is absolutely not proven), the total destruction of the buildings demonstrates that the principles of distinction and proportionality have been flagrantly violated.’

    Indeed, RSF sent a letter to Fatou Bensouda, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, urging an investigation of Israel’s targeting of the offices of 23 media organizations in Gaza during Israel’s bombardment.

    ‘False Equivalence Between Occupier And Occupied’

    Gregory Shupak wrote in a piece for Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, the US-based media watchdog, that corporate media coverage presented a ‘false equivalence between occupier and occupied’. He continued:

    ‘The fatal flaw in the “both sides” narrative is that only the Israeli side has ethnically cleansed and turned millions on the Palestinians’ side into refugees by preventing them from exercising their right to return to their homes. Israel is the only side subjecting anyone to apartheid and military occupation. It is only the Palestinian side—including those living inside of what is presently called Israel—that has been made to live as second-class citizens in their own land. That’s to say nothing of the lopsided scale of the death, injury and damage to infrastructure that Palestinians have experienced as compared to Israelis, both during the present offensive and in the longer term.’

    When last week’s truce ‘between Israel and Hamas’ was imminent, Jeremy Bowen told BBC viewers:

    ‘Now, the essentials of that conflict are not going to change. Until they do, there will be more trouble in the future.’

    But Israeli settler-colonialism, ethnic cleansing, lethal sanctions maintained by a brutal military occupation, apartheid, the killing and imprisonment of Palestinian children, Israel’s constant trampling of international law, and the daily humiliation of Palestinians constitute ‘trouble’ right now regardless of what happens ‘in the future’. These essential truths are regularly unmentioned or glossed over by Bowen, the BBC and the rest of a ‘mainstream’ media trying to ‘normalise the unthinkable’, by presenting violent occupation as a ‘clash’ between two sides competing for legitimacy.

    As Abby Martin noted in a video powerfully rebutting the Israeli claim that Hamas uses ‘human shields’ in Gaza:

    ‘Israel has intentionally made Gaza unliveable. The only way Gaza is able to exert pressure on Israel is by firing rockets. If they peacefully protest their conditions, they’re massacred just the same. If they do nothing, Israel continues to blockade them, erode their living conditions while ethnically cleansing the rest of their land.’

    This perspective – the Palestinian perspective – is almost entirely absent from news coverage. Moreover, WikiLeaks has revealed that when Israel’s forces invaded Gaza in 2009’s ‘Operation Cast Lead’, they  – Israel – did actually use Gazans as human shields. A classified US cable reported that Israeli soldiers:

    ‘testified to instances where Gazans were used as human shields, incendiary phosphorous shells were fired over civilian population areas, and other examples of excessive firepower that caused unnecessary fatalities and destruction of property.’

    During the latest phase of Israeli aggression, Israel’s Minister of Defence Benny Gantz warned:

    ‘No person, neighbourhood or area in Gaza is immune [from airstrikes]’

    This is a grotesque justification for war crimes. Where was the headlined outrage in response from ‘mainstream’ media that regularly cite defence of human rights as justification for war on countries like Iraq, Syria and Libya?

    Hamas: A ‘Convenient Monster’

    Hamas is regularly presented by corporate media as some kind of monster, a terrorist organisation with a declared intention of destroying Israel. This is a ‘convenient’ misrepresentation, as explained cogently in a recent interview with Frank Barat by Imad Alsoos, a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute, who is an expert on Hamas.

    Likewise, in an interview with Afshin Rattansi on RT’s ‘Going Underground’, John Pilger commented:

    ‘There’s been a whole attempt to make Hamas the centre of the reporting. And that’s nonsense. As if Hamas is a peculiar demon. In fact, Hamas and its military wing are part of a resistance; a resistance that was provoked by the Israelis. The real demon in this is Israel. But it’s not simply Israel. I mean, this is as much a British and American war against Palestine, as it is an Israeli one.’

    Pilger added that this is a war:

    ‘against the people of Palestine who are doing one thing – and that is exercising their moral and legal right to resist a brutal occupation.’

    It is rarely mentioned in the ‘mainstream’ media that Hamas is, as Pilger pointed out, the legitimately elected government of Gaza. Moreover, Hamas has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders. But Israel has always rejected the offer, just as it rejected the Arab League peace plan of 2002; and just as it has always rejected the international consensus for a peaceful solution in the Middle East. Why? Because the threat of such ‘peace offensives’ would involve unacceptable concessions and compromises. Israeli writer Amos Elon has written of the ‘panic and unease among our political leadership’ caused by Arab peace proposals.1

    The Palestinians are seen as an obstacle by Israel’s leaders; an irritant to be subjugated. Noam Chomsky commented:

    ‘Traditionally over the years, Israel has sought to crush any resistance to its programs of takeover of the parts of Palestine it regards as valuable, while eliminating any hope for the indigenous population to have a decent existence enjoying national rights.’

    And, as Chomsky noted:

    ‘The key feature of the occupation has always been humiliation: they [the Palestinians] must not be allowed to raise their heads. The basic principle, often openly expressed, is that the “Araboushim” – a term that belongs with “nigger” or “kike” – must understand who rules this land and who walks in it with head lowered and eyes averted.”2

    In 2018, when Palestinians were being shot dead by Israeli soldiers in peaceful weekly ‘Great March of Return’ protests near Gaza’s border, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy observed that:

    ‘the killing of Palestinians is accepted in Israel more lightly than the killing of mosquitoes’.

    Given all of the above context, it is criminal that, day after day, BBC News presented a false balance between a powerful Israeli state-occupier and a brutalised, ethnically cleansed, apartheid-suffering Palestinian people. This systematic misrepresentation of reality amounts to complicity in Israel’s vast PR campaign to ‘justify’ its war crimes, brutality and repression of Palestinian people.

    As well as Bowen’s wilfully distorted reporting for BBC News, and the biased coverage by corporate media generally, Pilger pointed to the lack of dissent in the UK Parliament in the face of atrocities being committed once again by Israel. He focused particular attention on:

    ‘Starmer’s Labour party which allowed pro-Israel groups to direct the policies of the Labour party, that, in effect, support this attack. When you have the Shadow Foreign Secretary saying that to criticise Israeli atrocities is antisemitic, then we’re in Lewis Carroll world, really.’

    Concluding Remarks

    Chomsky once wrote of an elderly Palestinian man demonstrating in Gaza with a placard that read:

    ‘You take my water, burn my olive trees, destroy my house, take my job, steal my land, imprison my father, kill my mother, bombard my country, starve us all, humiliate us all but I am to blame: I shot a rocket back.’

    This simple but devastating message, said Chomsky, is ‘the proper context’ for ‘the savage punishment of Gaza.’

    It is a context that is almost entirely missing from corporate media coverage of Israel and Palestine, not least by BBC News.

    1. Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, Pluto Press, London, 1999, p. 75.
    2. Chomsky, op. cit., p. 489.
    The post “The Savage Punishment Of Gaza”: Israel’s Latest Assault On Palestine’s Open Prison first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Background

    The Geneva Academy of international Humanitarian Law and Human Rights is a postgraduate joint center located in Geneva, Switzerland. The faculty includes professors from both founding institutions and guest professors from major universities.  The Geneva Academy is affiliated with the University of Geneva.

    Dr. Nils Melzer has been the Swiss Human Rights Chair (HR Chair) at the Geneva Academy since March 2016. As HR Chair he develops and promotes the Geneva Academy expertise in HR via policy work, cutting-edge research, expert meetings, the development of partnerships and teaching. Since November 2016, Nils Melzer has also been the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.

    *****

    Dear Dr. Melzer,

    As UN special Rapporteur on Torture, your mandate comprises three main activities:

    1) transmitting urgent appeals to States with regard to individuals reported to be at risk of torture, as well as communications on past alleged cases of torture;
    2) undertaking fact-finding country visits; and,
    3) submitting annual reports on activities, the mandate and methods of work to the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly.

    See a full description of mandate here.

    Dr. Melzer, your first mandate as Special Rapporteur on Torture is appealing urgently on States and Nations with regard to individuals that are at risk of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. This is the case with children, being forced to wearing masks, including in class, physical distancing, home schooling, out of touch with their friends and colleagues, but forced to be repeatedly covid tested in schools with the hurtful RT-PCT test (RT-PCT = reverse transcription of the polymerase chain reaction). A case in point – though not exclusive – is Switzerland, where cantonal authorities are compelling schools to periodically test children from as young as Kindergarten to pre-college level.

    Children’s mask wearing (as well as for senior adults) causes chronic headaches and fatigue because blood and brain receive insufficient oxygen which may lead to lasting damage, including memory loss. Children suffer psychological traumas. Depression and suicide rates increase exponentially.

    At the same time, children are increasingly being coerced via teachers and community authorities to be vaccinated against Covid-19, even though the mRNA-type “vaccines” almost the only so-called vaccines available in Europe and the US, are not officially considered as “vaccines” by CDC, but “experimental gene therapies”; i.e., primarily the Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnsons and Johnson and a number of other GAVI-supported COVAX injections, or so-called vaccines.

    These so-called vaccines – or rather gene-therapy experimental inoculations – are known to be dangerous and bear special long-term risks for children.1

    Dr. Melzer, this is an Urgent Appeal – to save Human Rights for children around the world from cruel and inhuman covid measures applied to them, including to adolescents and young adults – measures that have nothing but absolutely nothing to do with health protection but everything with oppression towards long-term slavery, and, yes, a systematic and massive-style depopulation.

    You recently said correctly and wisely “Sadly, today, torture remains a very real part of situations of conflict and violence”. What many of the 193 UN member governments are forcing their children to go through is a form of torture, especially considering their potential – and likely long-term effects. (See again the report of Doctors for Covid Ethics here.)

    You added that you won’t be able to “save the world single-handedly as a Special Rapporteur, …..  that there are hundreds of stakeholders – organizations, NGO’s, UN agencies and individual experts – who have been working on torture issues for decades. [However], a Special Rapporteur’s independence means I can pick up issues that have remained under the radar of the international community, bring them to the table and try to drive cooperation.”

    Dr. Melzer, what I described before as cruel and inhuman acts against children, akin to torture, is one of those issues you mentioned. Therefore, my quest today, my Appeal to you as Human Rights Representative, is to please pick up the issue of covid-based Human Rights abuses on the world population, but particularly on children.

    What the absurd covid measures do to the world is a crime, but what they are doing to children is beyond a crime; it is totally immoral, destructive for our powerless children, and for the future of these children, as well as for society as a whole as children are our societies’ future. And worse of all, these measures have nothing to do with health protection – but absolutely nothing. They are sheer tyranny to control.

    Children behind masks, social distancing, locked down, remote schooling, deprived from meeting, talking and playing with their peers, friends — instead scaring them into losing their personalities, their self-assurance and self-esteem — results not only in a physical health problem, but also a psychological health issue which, over time, has untold, uncountable collateral damage, including total submissiveness for today’s children.

    Our children are vulnerable – they are our future.

    They need their Human Rights defended.

    Dear Dr. Melzer,  please speak up for them at the UN, at UNICEF, in front of the 193 UN member governments, which follow all more or less the same insane covid narrative, the same covid Human Rights abuse, and especially the same Human Rights abuse on children.

    Thank you.

    1. See: Doctors for Covid Ethics Rebuttal Letter to the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
    The post Human Rights for Children: Saving Children from Covid Measures Abuses   first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.