radiofree.asia

Category: Human Rights

  • Gladys Mbuya, a human rights defender from Cameroon

    Gladys Mbuya is a lawyer by profession, a human rights defender, and a peace crusader. She is the founder of the Liberal Law Office in Cameroon and serves as the president of the International Federation of Women Lawyers for Cameroon. She also holds a role as a traditional leader.

    Her work centres on promoting the recognition and respect of human rights, particularly the rights of women and girls. She represents women and girls in court who cannot afford legal fees and actively advocates for the revision of laws that discriminate against them.

    Gladys faced intimidation, threats, and even attempts at arrest for her activism, yet remains steadfast in her mission. She has defended numerous individuals – including prominent activists – in cases involving arbitrary detention and violations of free expression and assembly. She was part of the legal team that defended Mimi Mefo, Ndoki Michèle, and Agbor Balla, which led to their cases being dropped at the court.

    ‘Human rights defence work is a noble cause. The international community should continue standing by human rights defenders. They should increase the volume of political pressure on our governments for them to fulfil their obligations under all the international conventions they have ratified.’

    https://ishr.ch/defender-stories/human-rights-defenders-story-gladys-fri-mbuya-epse-luku-from-cameroon

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • The west ignores Rwanda’s dark side – and political prisoners like my mother pay the price | Rémy Amahirwa

    She was arrested after planning to run against Paul Kagame. It’s time democracies woke up to the true nature of his regime

    • Rémy Amahirwa is the oldest son of Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza

    When I see the “Visit Rwanda” logo stitched on to the jerseys of famous football clubs like Arsenal or printed in glossy travel magazines, I feel a rush of pride for the natural beauty and warm hospitality of the country of my birth. Yet, I wonder whether the tourists being courted truly understand the darker side of Rwanda. This side has torn my family apart for nearly two decades; it is the reason my mother sits behind bars, once again, as a political prisoner.

    My mother, Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, is a political activist who first returned to Rwanda from exile in 2010. Our family had a stable and comfortable life in the Netherlands for many years, but my mother could not stop thinking about her native Rwanda and was deeply troubled by the events unfolding there. The president, Paul Kagame, heralded as the man who stopped the 1994 genocide, was quietly becoming yet another strongman on the African continent. My mother could not silently watch from the sidelines in Europe as Rwanda’s citizens lost their freedoms and suffered persecution.

    Continue reading…

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

  • Marshall Islands president warns of threat to Pacific Islands Forum unity

    By Giff Johnson, Marshall Islands Journal editor/RNZ Pacific correspondent

    Leaders of the three Pacific nations with diplomatic ties to Taiwan are united in a message to the Pacific Islands Forum that the premier regional body must not allow non-member countries to dictate Forum policies — a reference to the China-Taiwan geopolitical debate.

    Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine, in remarks to the opening of Parliament in Majuro yesterday, joined leaders from Tuvalu and Palau in strongly worded comments putting the region on notice that the future unity and stability of the Forum hangs in the balance of decisions that are made for next month’s Forum leaders’ meeting in the Solomon Islands.

    This is just three years since the organisation pulled back from the brink of splintering.

    Marshall Islands, Palau and Tuvalu are among the 12 countries globally that maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

    At issue is next month’s annual meeting of leaders being hosted by Solomon Islands, which is closely allied to China, and the concern that the Solomon Islands will choose to limit or prevent Taiwan’s engagement in the Forum, despite it being a major donor partner to the three island nations as well as a donor to the Forum Secretariat.

    President Surangel Whipps Jr
    President Surangel Whipps Jr . . . diplomatic ties to Taiwan. Image: Richard Brooks/RNZ Pacific

    China worked to marginalise Taiwan and its international relationships including getting the Forum to eliminate a reference to Taiwan in last year’s Forum leaders’ communique after leaders had agreed on the text.

    “I believe firmly that the Forum belongs to its members, not countries that are non-members,” said President Heine yesterday in Parliament’s opening ceremony. “And non-members should not be allowed to dictate how our premier regional organisation conducts its business.”

    Heine continued: “We witnessed at the Forum in Tonga how China, a world superpower, interfered to change the language of the Forum Communique, the communiqué of our Pacific Leaders . . . If the practice of interference in the affairs of the Forum becomes the norm, then I question our nation’s membership in the organisation.”

    She cited the position of the three Taiwan allies in the Pacific in support of Taiwan participation at next month’s Forum.

    Tuvalu's Prime Minister Feleti Teo
    Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Feleti Teo . . . also has diplomatic ties to Taiwan. Image: Ludovic Marin/RNZ Pacific:

    “There should not be any debate on the issue since Taiwan has been a Forum development partner since 1993,” Heine said.

    Heine also mentioned that there was an “ongoing review of the regional architecture of the Forum” and its many agencies “to ensure that their deliverables are on target, and inter-agency conflicts are minimised.”

    The President said during this review of the Forum and its agencies, “it is critical that the question of Taiwan’s participation in Forum meetings is settled once and for all to safeguard equity and sovereignty of member governments.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Marshall Islands president warns of threat to Pacific Islands Forum unity

    By Giff Johnson, Marshall Islands Journal editor/RNZ Pacific correspondent

    Leaders of the three Pacific nations with diplomatic ties to Taiwan are united in a message to the Pacific Islands Forum that the premier regional body must not allow non-member countries to dictate Forum policies — a reference to the China-Taiwan geopolitical debate.

    Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine, in remarks to the opening of Parliament in Majuro yesterday, joined leaders from Tuvalu and Palau in strongly worded comments putting the region on notice that the future unity and stability of the Forum hangs in the balance of decisions that are made for next month’s Forum leaders’ meeting in the Solomon Islands.

    This is just three years since the organisation pulled back from the brink of splintering.

    Marshall Islands, Palau and Tuvalu are among the 12 countries globally that maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

    At issue is next month’s annual meeting of leaders being hosted by Solomon Islands, which is closely allied to China, and the concern that the Solomon Islands will choose to limit or prevent Taiwan’s engagement in the Forum, despite it being a major donor partner to the three island nations as well as a donor to the Forum Secretariat.

    President Surangel Whipps Jr
    President Surangel Whipps Jr . . . diplomatic ties to Taiwan. Image: Richard Brooks/RNZ Pacific

    China worked to marginalise Taiwan and its international relationships including getting the Forum to eliminate a reference to Taiwan in last year’s Forum leaders’ communique after leaders had agreed on the text.

    “I believe firmly that the Forum belongs to its members, not countries that are non-members,” said President Heine yesterday in Parliament’s opening ceremony. “And non-members should not be allowed to dictate how our premier regional organisation conducts its business.”

    Heine continued: “We witnessed at the Forum in Tonga how China, a world superpower, interfered to change the language of the Forum Communique, the communiqué of our Pacific Leaders . . . If the practice of interference in the affairs of the Forum becomes the norm, then I question our nation’s membership in the organisation.”

    She cited the position of the three Taiwan allies in the Pacific in support of Taiwan participation at next month’s Forum.

    Tuvalu's Prime Minister Feleti Teo
    Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Feleti Teo . . . also has diplomatic ties to Taiwan. Image: Ludovic Marin/RNZ Pacific:

    “There should not be any debate on the issue since Taiwan has been a Forum development partner since 1993,” Heine said.

    Heine also mentioned that there was an “ongoing review of the regional architecture of the Forum” and its many agencies “to ensure that their deliverables are on target, and inter-agency conflicts are minimised.”

    The President said during this review of the Forum and its agencies, “it is critical that the question of Taiwan’s participation in Forum meetings is settled once and for all to safeguard equity and sovereignty of member governments.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Eugene Doyle: Recognise Palestine? Then free Marwan Barghouti

    COMMENTARY:  By Eugene Doyle

    The world’s most important hostage — must be released. The powerful Western countries have signalled that in the face of the genocide they may recognise the state of Palestine.

    States need leaders. That’s why Marwan Barghouti – often dubbed the Palestinian Mandela — must be freed.

    A former head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, Ephraim Halevy, agrees with calls by leaders from across the Middle East for Barghouti’s release: “Barghouti is popular with his people, he has a clear position, he speaks Hebrew well and can negotiate; all of which qualifies him to lead a new path.

    “We have to be creative in dealing with the future in the West Bank as well and the rest of the territories, as there are millions of Palestinians, and transferring two million Palestinians from Gaza is unrealistic,” Halevy told Middle East Monitor.

    States need leaders
    The UK, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and a baker’s dozen of Western-aligned states have signalled they may finally join humanity and recognise the right of Palestine to exist as a state.

    They are doing so at a moment when the physical existence of the Palestinian people in Palestine is in peril due to the US-Israeli genocide.

    If this is not simply another hollow, performative gesture, real things must happen: first and foremost the lifting of the siege and the ending of the man-made famine.

    Simultaneously, Palestine needs a credible leadership to negotiate its future. Why call for recognition of a state when hundreds of the top leadership of that future state are held in cruel captivity?

    These hostages seldom receive any attention — in contrast to the remaining 20 or so living hostages held by Hamas and other groups.

    Who decides who represents Palestine?
    In typical Western fashion the announcement of potentially recognising the Palestinian state comes with a swag of conditions — foremost that Hamas, the most popular movement in Palestine, the winner of the last free and fair elections in both the West Bank and Gaza, must not be part of any government.

    OK, so, if the Palestinians bow to that condition, who will be the leaders of this state? Who has the standing with all the factions of the Palestinian polity?

    Marwan Barghouti could be such a man. The geriatric and thoroughly discredited Mahmoud Abbas, unelected leader of the Palestinian Authority, is largely seen as a tool of the US and Israel.

    More than 90 percent of Palestinians want him gone. In contrast, Barghouti is a revered figure, respected by all Palestinian organisations. He consistently polls as the most popular leader.

    The Israelis have murdered many of the Palestinian leaders (along with targeted assassinations of hundreds of writers, professors, lawyers, doctors and other people crucial to state-building). They even killed the lead negotiator in the hostage release process.

    It is vital that the West ensures Barghouti is protected from further mistreatment. It is also worth dismissing the lie that Israel has no Palestinian partner to negotiate with; Barghouti has the will and the attributes.

    The blockage is actually Western complicity in ethnic cleansing, land stealing and the overall Greater Israel Project.

    Barghouti: the most important political prisoner
    During the past 23 years in Israeli prisons Barghouti has been beaten, tortured, sexually molested and had limbs broken, as documented by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. What hasn’t been broken is the spirit of the greatest living Palestinian — a symbol of his people’s “legendary steadfastness” and determination to win freedom from occupation.

    As I wrote in 2024:

    “Barghouti, the terrorist, rotting in jail. Barghouti, the indomitable leader who has not given up on peace. Barghouti, loved by ordinary people as ‘a man of the street’. Barghouti, supporter of the Oslo Accords. Barghouti, the 15 year-old youth leader standing beside Yasser Arafat.

    “Barghouti, once a member of parliament and Fatah secretary-general. Barghouti, leader of Tanzim, a PLO military wing, choosing militancy after the betrayal of the Oslo promise by the Americans and Israelis became fully clear.

    “Barghouti, a leader of the intifada that restored hope to a broken people. Barghouti, the scholar and thinker. Barghouti, the political strategist and unifier.”

    Marwan is the most famous Palestinian prisoner but it should never be forgotten that the entire Palestinian people have been held in bondage for generations.

    The West should force the Israelis to release Barghouti — and thousands of other hostages held by Israel. To do so publicly and successfully would be a powerful statement of future intentions.

    The release of one man cannot, however, change the world: it will take a genuine course correction by the West to use their collective power to force the Israelis to abandon the endless killings, starvation, land thieving and other lawlessness in the Palestinian lands.

    The West must stop posturing and start acting
    If the Western states fail to quickly move to change facts on the ground, it will suggest that the whole exercise was only intended to achieve political cover for the pro-genocidal forces of the US and the other enablers like Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

    Netanyahu is driving both the Palestinians and Israel to destruction.

    Ironically, the Palestinian Marwan Barghouti could save Israel from moral death and, simultaneously, the Palestinians from further physical destruction. He is a leader that the West and the Israelis, if they chose, could negotiate with.

    As Alon Liel, formerly Israel’s most senior diplomat, said a couple of years ago: Barghouti is “the ultimate leader of the Palestinian people,” and “he is the only one who can extricate us from the quagmire we are in.”

    One final point: negotiating with ‘terrorists’
    The West has made it clear they believe Hamas are too monstrous, too terroristic to be involved in a peace process.

    But the West is entirely comfortable with the racist, fascist, genocidal leaders of Israel remaining at the helm of their country. There is a reason for this and one the West needs to front up to: racism and contempt for the Palestinians as a people.

    Barghouti and hundrds of other leaders have endured torture and worse without our side raising even an eyebrow. The recent skite videos posted by IDF soldiers committing rape-murder inside Sde Temein prison says it all — they rightly assumed their depraved criminality would be sanctioned by the state and silently tolerated by the West.

    War crimes are fine and no barrier to leadership if these crimes are committed by regimes that we are deeply committed to. After all, as our leaders repeatedly tell us: we share values with the Israelis.

    I’ll give the last word to Marwan Barghouti.

    “Resistance is a holy right for the Palestinian people to face the Israeli occupation. Nobody should forget that the Palestinian people negotiated for 10 years and accepted difficult and humiliating agreements, and in the end didn’t get anything except authority over the people, and no authority over land, or sovereignty.”

    It is time to change that and to stand with humanity. Free Marwan Barghouti!

    Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • ICE is Enticing New Recruits With Student Loan Forgiveness

    With an influx of funding from President Donald Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is ramping up recruitment efforts to implement its plans to arrest, detain, and deport millions of people living in the United States. ICE is trying to entice recruits with signing bonuses of up to $50,000 and student loan forgiveness of up to $60,000.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • NYT Suppressed Genocide Discussion When It Could Have Made a Difference

     

    NYT: I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.

    Omer Bartov (New York Times, 7/15/25): “Israel’s actions could be understood only as the implementation of the expressed intent to make the Gaza Strip uninhabitable for its Palestinian population.”

    More than a year ago, the Intercept (4/15/24) reported on a leaked internal New York Times memo from the newspaper’s management, telling its reporters covering Gaza to “restrict the use of the terms ‘genocide’ and ‘ethnic cleansing.’” About “genocide” specifically, the memo decreed, “We should…set a high bar for allowing others to use it as an accusation, whether in quotations or not.”

    That bar appears to have extended to paid advertising at the paper: The American Friends Service Committee (1/8/25), a Quaker organization, said it had “canceled planned advertising with the New York Times after the paper refused to allow an ad that referred to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”

    The Times made waves, then, when it published an op-ed by prominent Israeli genocide scholar Omer Bartov (7/15/25) arguing that it is “no longer possible to deny that the pattern of IDF operations was consistent with the statements denoting genocidal intent made by Israeli leaders.” Bartov concluded: “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.”

    Two weeks later, the opinion page also ran an op-ed (7/30/25) by three writers, two of whom are from Physicians for Human Rights Israel, which said: “Through the wholesale destruction of Gaza’s health care system, Israel is committing genocide, but on a longer timeline than direct killing would imply.” The writers argued: “This is not a genocide that can still be prevented. That threshold has already been crossed. What remains is a long trajectory of harm.”

    ‘War for a just cause’

    NYT: No, Israel Is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza

    Bret Stephens (New York Times,  7/22/25): “If genocide…is to retain its status as a uniquely horrific crime, then the term can’t be promiscuously applied to any military situation we don’t like.”

    From July 15, when Bartov’s op-ed ran, through the end of July, the opinion page published eight pieces that used the word “genocide” in the context of Gaza, whether accusatory, defensive or neutral; in the entire 12 months prior, it had only run 38 such pieces, or less than one a week.

    True, the Times‘ own columnists and readers were quick to decry Bartov’s conclusion. Columnist Bret Stephens (New York Times, 7/22/25) argued that Israel’s actions couldn’t be considered genocidal because many Palestinians were still alive, which is like saying the existence of the Kardashians disproved the Armenian genocide.

    In a piece acknowledging Israel’s war is “unjust,” Times columnist Ross Douthat (7/26/25) likewise flatly denied the “genocide” label in his very first sentence, while applying it (“potentially”) to Hamas:

    Israel’s war in Gaza is not a genocide. It is a war for a just cause, the elimination of a cruel, fanatical, itself potentially genocidal terrorist organization that oppresses its own people, holds innocent hostages and will pose a severe danger to the state of Israel so long as it holds power.

    Nor does the publication of Bartov’s op-ed appear to mark a change in the editors’ willingness to apply the label themselves. The Times editorial board (7/30/25) ran a subsequent piece calling the starvation in Gaza a “moral crisis,” but refuses to invoke the accusation of genocide in its plainest form, instead painting the forced starvation as the opposite of intentional: “Israel’s often reckless administration of its war and occupation has helped create this emergency.”

    Late last year, the Times (12/5/24) reported that Amnesty International “became the first major international human rights organization to accuse Israel of carrying out genocide in Gaza,” adding that the accusation drew “rebuke from Israeli officials who denied the claim.”

    And even before the Intercept story dropped, the Times (1/26/24) reported on the International Court of Justice “ordering Israel to take proactive steps to ensure genocide doesn’t occur in the future.”

    But the recent Bartov piece is different than these types of articles, in that it is a full-throated accusation of genocide against Israel, not a debate or a winding discussion about the use of the word in conflicts, as the Times had featured in its magazine (8/20/24). Bartov is an Israeli, and a noted scholar on the subject of genocide. It’s tough even for hardened partisans like Stephens to counter that with sanctimonious bluster on the opinion page.

    ‘Crucial to warn’

    Jewish Currents: A Textbook Case of Genocide

    Raz Segal (Jewish Currents, 10/13/23): “Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is quite explicit, open and unashamed. Perpetrators of genocide usually do not express their intentions so clearly.”

    However, Bartov is not the first of his kind. Raz Segal is also a noted Israeli scholar of genocide, and published his essay “A Textbook Case of Genocide” (Jewish Currents, 10/13/23) in the earliest stages of Israel’s retribution campaign in Gaza. (Bartov cited Segal in his Times opinion piece.) Segal’s piece was covered in the wider press (including, belatedly, the Times—10/23/24), because it led to the University of Minnesota revoking a job offer to him (Democracy Now!, 6/18/24; Center for Constitutional Rights, 7/31/24).

    Interestingly, Bartov wrote in the Times (11/10/23) two years ago that while he admitted war crimes were taking place, “as a historian of genocide, I believe that there is no proof that genocide is currently taking place in Gaza.” In both his latest op-ed and an interview with the Times (7/23/25), he said his opinion fundamentally changed in May of 2024.

    Bartov spoke to other news outlets, like Democracy Now! (12/30/24), about the application of the genocide label in Gaza in that time period. And he wrote publicly (Guardian, 8/13/24) of his change in opinion, citing his 2023 Times op-ed:

    On 10 November 2023, I wrote in the New York Times: “As a historian of genocide, I believe that there is no proof that genocide is now taking place in Gaza, although it is very likely that war crimes, and even crimes against humanity, are happening…. We know from history that it is crucial to warn of the potential for genocide before it occurs, rather than belatedly condemn it after it has taken place. I think we still have that time.”

    I no longer believe that. By the time I traveled to Israel, I had become convinced that at least since the attack by the IDF on Rafah on 6 May 2024, it was no longer possible to deny that Israel was engaged in systematic war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal actions.

    But while Bartov’s change in opinion was published in the Guardian, his latest for the Times came a year later. Bartov explained to FAIR in an email:

    I was approached by Dan Wakin of the New York Times in May to write an op-ed and we worked on it intensely together until its publication. I have learned not to propose op-eds—never had luck with that—but am happy to write them when asked.

    Other witnesses

    UN News: Rights expert finds ‘reasonable grounds’ genocide is being committed in Gaza

    Special rapporteur Francesca Albanese (UN News, 3/26/24): “The genocide in Gaza is the most extreme stage of a longstanding settler-colonial process of erasure of the native Palestinians.”

    But even in the early days of the war, others called attention to the possibility of genocide. The UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (11/16/23) said, only a month after the Hamas attack on Israel that instigated the current crisis in Gaza:

    Grave violations committed by Israel against Palestinians in the aftermath of 7 October, particularly in Gaza, point to a genocide in the making, UN experts said today. They illustrated evidence of increasing genocidal incitement, overt intent to “destroy the Palestinian people under occupation,” loud calls for a “second Nakba” in Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory, and the use of powerful weaponry with inherently indiscriminate impacts, resulting in a colossal death toll and destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure.

    Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has also made the case to invoke the genocide charge clear (UN News, 3/26/24):

    Following nearly six months of unrelenting Israeli assault on occupied Gaza, it is my solemn duty to report on the worst of what humanity is capable of, and to present my findings…. There are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide…has been met.

    Said Christopher Lockyear, secretary general of Doctors Without Borders (12/19/24):

    What our medical teams have witnessed on the ground throughout this conflict is consistent with the descriptions provided by an increasing number of legal experts and organizations concluding that genocide is taking place in Gaza.

    In the early days of the war, around 800 genocide scholars—including Segal and Bartov—signed a public statement (OpinioJuris, 10/18/23; Common Dreams, 10/18/23) sounding “the alarm about the possibility of the crime of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” More than a year and half ago, Israeli columnist Gideon Levy (Haaretz, 1/14/24) wrote a piece called “If It Isn’t a Genocide in Gaza, Then What Is It?”

    ‘They have no right to exist’

    Middle East Monitor: Israel ‘racing to wipe out Gaza, eliminate its people’: Heritage minister

    “We do not need to deal with Gaza’s hunger,” said Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu (Middle East Monitor, 7/24/25). Gaza will become “entirely Jewish.”

    In other words, there was plenty of talk outside of the Times in the time after the Intercept leak and before the Bartov piece describing what Israel was doing as not just heavy-handed war, but actual genocide. After Israeli Education Minister Yoav Kisch (10/9/23) said, “Those are animals, they have no right to exist…. They need to be exterminated,” a warning about genocide on the Times opinion page could have forced more people to grapple with this reality.

    There are many other examples of genocidal declarations, like a former lawmaker saying on Israeli television (X, 5/21/25): “The enemy is not Hamas. Every child, every baby in Gaza is an enemy.” A prominent Israeli television producer (New Arab, 5/5/25) made

    social media posts in which he called for a “Holocaust” against the people of Gaza…referencing the methods used during the Nazi genocide of European Jews, including gas chambers and deportation trains.

    Israel’s government is “racing against time to wipe out Gaza and its Palestinian population,” Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu told Israeli radio (Middle East Monitor, 7/24/25). “We are eliminating this evil. We are eliminating its residents.”

    ‘What they do shapes standards’

    Nation: The World’s Top Medical Journal Is Giving Cover to Genocide

    Eric Reinhart (The Nation, 3/26/25) has called out other elite publications for whitewashing genocide–such as the New England Journal of Medicine (3/22/25), which published without disclosure a piece on Gaza about “the power of healthcare to overcome animosity” that was co-authored by a veteran of  the Israeli military’s Special Intelligence Unit.

    For Eric Reinhart, an anthropologist and clinician who has written for the Nation and Scientific American, this has been incredibly frustrating, because he and other writers have been trying, unsuccessfully, to submit articles on the Gaza genocide issue for the Times since the beginning of this war. “There was a rather systematic exclusion,” he said, noting that he and other scholars were writing that “there was a genocide as declared by the intent of the Israeli government.”

    Reinhart noted that after these attempts to print the issue of genocide at the Times the Bartov piece was finally published in the Times, as well as the Physicians for Human Rights Israel op-ed. This seemed to confirm his suspicion that the Times preferred Israelis speak to this issue, rather than non-Israelis. “It’s an absolutely obscene way to approach this,” he said.

    This isn’t just a stylistic criticism. Reinhart said that the Times’ opinion page carries political weight, and sounding the alarm on genocide earlier could have had an impact. “What they do shapes standards, which influences policies and influences politicians,” he said.

    With Gaza practically obliterated and starvation raging, the Bartov piece is welcome, but it might be too little, too late in terms of pressuring world powers into making substantive change. Even if it does lead to a change in US policy in the region to restrain Israel, the world will look at Gaza as it once gazed upon the ruins in Bosnia and Rwanda. And the people will wonder why outlets like the New York Times didn’t change their tune sooner.

    Research assistance: Shirlynn Chan

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • DHS Says DACA Recipients Are “Illegal Aliens,” Tells Them to “Self-Deport”

    Despite previous statements indicating that the president wanted to protect Dreamers, the Trump administration is now calling DACA recipients “illegal aliens” and encouraging them to self-deport. DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is a program that began under President Barack Obama which allows people who came to the United States as children no later than June 15, 2007…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • 59th Session of the Human Rights Council: what NGOs thought of the session

    At the 59th Human Rights Council session, civil society organisations share reflections on key outcomes and highlight gaps in addressing crucial issues and situations. Full written version below.

    We join others who have expressed grave concern about the UN’s financial situation throughout the session. We deplore that we are in this position primarily due to the failure of some States to pay their assessed contributions in full and on time. We regret that this crisis is currently affecting the Council’s ability to deliver its mandate. Today, UN Member States are sending a clear message that human rights and their implementation are optional and not inalienable. We call on all States to pay their dues to the UN in full and without delay, both now and in future years, and strengthen the human rights pillar of the UN by substantially increasing its regular budget. [see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/united-nations/]

    We welcome the Council’s decision to renew, once more, the Mandate of the Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, following a call from more than 1,259 organisations from 157 countries and territories.  While the mandate was supported by the overwhelming majority of Council members, we regret that a mandate focusing on core human rights issues such as freedom from violence and discrimination was once again put for a vote.

    We welcome the adoption of the resolution on civil society space. The resolution acknowledges important civil society initiatives such as Declaration +25 and addresses key and emerging trends such as strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs), the phenomenon of transnational repression, and foreign funding legislation, as well as other restrictive legislation including counter-terrorism legislation. We regret, however, that language on transnational repression has been weakened throughout the negotiations and does not take a step forward in terms of defining the phenomenon and its patterns. ..

    We welcome the adoption of the resolution on human rights and climate change in relation to climate finance. As acknowledged by the resolution, climate finance is a tool for addressing climate change and it is also important for the enjoyment of human rights when finance prioritises equity, climate justice, social justice, inclusion and just transition processes. … We also regret that, notwithstanding the support expressed by numerous delegations, this resolution is blatantly silent in recognising the positive, important, legitimate and vital role that environmental human rights defenders (EHRDs) play in the promotion and protection of human rights and the environment, particularly in the context of climate change. As recognised by the HRC resolution 40/11, EHRDs are one of the most exposed and at risk around the world. The Inter-American Court on Human Rights has recently ruled in its Advisory Opinion on “Climate Emergency and Human Rights” that EHRDs play a fundamental role due to the urgency, gravity and complexity to address the climate emergency. We will not have climate justice without consulting, listening and including EHRDs in climate actions and initiatives, including this annual resolution.

    We express our support for a new strong resolution on the safety of journalists, adopted by consensus and co-sponsored by over 70 countries from all world regions, signalling a renewed international commitment to prevent, protect and remedy all human rights violations against journalists. The resolution becomes the first across the UN to recommend a range of concrete, specific measures to

    It is concerning that the Council could not find consensus on the resolution on access to medicines, vaccines and other health products. States should acknowledge that intellectual property rights can be a barrier for access to health products, especially in public health emergencies and should act with a view to finding human-rights compliant solutions. States should further ensure that the benefits of scientific progress is available, accessible, acceptable and of good quality to all people, without discrimination. 

    We welcome the resolution on new and emerging digital technologies and human rights. The resolution reaffirms the need for human rights due diligence and impact assessments throughout the life cycle of new and emerging digital technologies, and crucially calls upon States to refrain from or cease the use of artificial intelligence applications that are impossible to operate in compliance with international human rights law. The resolution importantly mandates OHCHR to expand its work on UN system-wide promotion, coordination, and coherence on matters related to human rights in new and emerging digital technologies.

    We welcome the rejection by the Council of an unprecedented, harmful draft resolution (L.1/Rev.1) presented in bad faith by Eritrea to discontinue the mandate of the Special Rapporteur. The voting result (25 against, 4 in favour) is clear and will deter similar initiatives to terminate mandates. The Pandora’s Box remains closed for now. We welcome the adoption of resolution L.7, which extends the mandate of the Special Rapporteur and enables continued scrutiny of Eritrea‘s dire human rights situation.

    We welcome the adoption by consensus of the resolution on the situation of human rights of Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar—a strong signal of the Council’s continued prioritization of their plight. As violence between the Myanmar military and Arakan Army escalates, Rohingya face renewed existential threats. We recognize the efforts made to align the resolution closer to the evolving situation on the ground, including its recognition of the role of Arakan Army along with the Myanmar military in perpetuating violence and targeting Rohingya. We also welcome the resolution’s acknowledgment of the worsening humanitarian crisis due to dwindling aid that is driving more Rohingya to risk dangerous journeys by sea. The call for protection of Rohingya across borders and respect for non-refoulement is vital. We support the resolution’s emphasis on accountability and reparations as prerequisites for safe, voluntary, and dignified return of Rohingya refugees. However, we regret its failure to call for an end to arms and jet fuel sale and transfers that continue to fuel ongoing violence.

    We emphasize the vital role of investigative mechanisms and, in the context of the UN’s liquidity crisis, we urge all those involved, including the Secretary-General and the High Commissioner, to allocate sufficient resources for these mechanisms to operate. All UN Member States must pay their dues in full and on time. As the conflict in Sudan, now in its third year, shows no sign of abating, resulting in the world’s largest displacement crisis and egregious atrocities against civilians, the work of the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) should continue. At HRC60, extending its mandate will be a priority. 

    We continue to deplore this Council’s exceptionalism towards serious human rights violations in China, including crimes against humanity. In his global update to this Council session, High Commissioner Türk indicated he remains ‘concerned about lack of progress on much-needed legal reform to ensure compliance with international human rights law’ and ‘regret[s] that there has not yet been a resolution to the individual cases [the OHCHR has] raised]’. It is imperative that the Council take action commensurate with the gravity of UN findings, by establishing a monitoring and reporting mechanism on China as repeatedly urged by over 40 UN experts since 2020. We urge China to genuinely engage with the UN human rights system to enact meaningful reform, and ensure all individuals and peoples enjoy their human rights, on the basis of recommendations from the OHCHR Xinjiang report, UN Treaty Bodies, and UN Special Procedures.

    This Council’s continued silence on the human rights crisis in Egypt remains of major concern.  The human rights situation in Egypt is worse than at any point in its modern history and continues to deteriorate.  During its UPR process, Egypt rejected or dismissed as “already implemented” recommendations related to serious human rights violations 134 times.  In particular, Egypt either rejected or dismissed recommendations to release political prisoners and end arbitrary arrests 12 times, to stop attacks against independent civil society and journalists 19 times, and to end torture and ill-treatment 6 times. The goverment also refused to ensure accountability for those who have committed torture and other human rights violations 7 times, and rejected or dismissed recommendations to halt violance and discrimination against women, minorities and members of the LGBT+ community 25 times, including repeatedly rejecting calls to criminalize marital rape, as well as forced virginity and anal exams.  In this context, action by the HRC to address these violations is as important as ever. 

    Watch the video of the statement below: 

    Signatories:

    1. African Centre for Democracy and Human Rights Studies (ACDHRS)
    2. Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA)
    3. Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS)
    4. CIVICUS
    5. Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR)
    6. Franciscans International 
    7. International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
    8. International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)
    9. World Uyghur Congress (WUC)

    https://ishr.ch/latest-updates/hrc59-civil-society-presents-key-takeaways-from-the-session/?mc_cid=561653a6d3&mc_eid=d1945ebb90

    https://www.fidh.org/en/international-advocacy/united-nations/human-rights-council/key-outcomes-of-the-59th-human-rights-council-session-progress-and

    https://www.civicus.org/index.php/fr/medias-ressources/112-news/7777-key-highlights-civicus-at-59th-session-of-the-un-human-rights-council

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Palestinian Human Rights Defender Awdah Hathaleen killed by Israeli Settler

    “Despite it all, I hold onto a small hope—that the future might bring justice, that our voices will eventually be heard, and that one day I can celebrate my birthday again, in peace, with the people I love, free from fear and loss.”  – Awdah Hathaleen, April 2025 Photo by: Emily Glick

    An Israeli settler shot dead a Palestinian teacher who helped film Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, according to the Palestinian education ministry and an Israeli-American activist who was at the scene of the shooting.

    No Other Land co-director Yuval Abraham said on X that a settler shot Odeh (also Awdah) Hathaleen in the lungs in Umm Al-Khair village in the occupied West Bank. Residents allege the shooter was Yinon Levy, who is sanctioned by the UK.

    Attorney Avichai Hajbi said he was representing a resident “who felt his life was in danger, was forced to fire his weapon into the air” after residents were “attacked by an Arab mob, along with foreign activists, with stones and violence”. Mattan Berner-Kadish, an Israeli-American activist at the scene, told the BBC that at about 17:20 local time (15:20 BST) on Monday, a bulldozer from a nearby Israeli settlement was driven through private Palestinian land, crushing a sewage pipe, multiple olive trees and two fences.

    Berner-Kadish and other activists, including Hathaleen’s cousin Ahmad, ran to block the bulldozer. The activist said the driver hit Ahmad in the neck and shoulder with a drill that extended from the bulldozer, with his footage capturing Ahmad falling to the ground. Berner-Kadish did not believe Levy was driving.

    While attending to Ahmad’s injuries, Berner-Kadish heard a pop. Running back to the village to get water, he saw Hathaleen lying bleeding from a gunshot wound and Levy, the only settler he saw, holding a gun.

    In a video believed to be filmed by a relative of Hathaleen and posted on social media, a man identified as Levy is seen holding a pistol with a bulldozer behind him, as men yell at him. Levy pushes at one man, who pushes back. Levy then raises his pistol and shoots ahead of him, then again into the air.

    The clip cuts off when the person filming turns around to run away as women are heard screaming. The footage does not show what or who the shots hit, if anything, and whether anyone else was shooting. There are no other settlers visible. Israeli police said it was investigating the incident in the area of Carmel, an Israeli settlement near Umm Al-Khair.

    “As a result of the incident, a Palestinian man was pronounced deceased. His exact involvement is under investigation,” police told the BBC. Police said on Tuesday morning they had detained an Israeli citizen for questioning. Israeli media later reported Levy was released on house arrest.

    The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) also detained five Palestinians on suspicion of involvement in the incident, along with two foreign tourists who were present. Berner-Kadish said on Tuesday evening they were still detained. The activist, who began visiting the village in 2021, said Hathaleen was “one of my best friends in the world” and the two were days away from constructing a football field in the village. He added that Hathaleen was a “warm and loving” father of three young children.

    The Palestinian education ministry said Hathaleen was a teacher at a local secondary school. US congresswoman Lateefah Simon, a Democrat from California, said she was “heartbroken” over the killing of Hathaleen. He and his cousin, “both holding valid visas”, were detained and deported from San Francisco airport last month while travelling for a multicultural faith dialogue, she said.

    Abraham said Hathaleen had helped film No Other Land, the 2025 Oscar winner for best documentary feature that follows the legal fight between the Israeli government and Palestinians over Masafer Yatta, a West Bank community of about 20 villages.

    ..Levy, a leader of an outpost farm, was sanctioned by the UK in 2024, along with others, because he “used physical aggression, threatened families at gunpoint, and destroyed property as part of a targeted and calculated effort to displace Palestinian communities”.

    He was also sanctioned by the US under the Biden administration, along with others, last year, but President Donald Trump lifted those sanctions.

    Gilad Kariv, a member of Israel’s Knesset from the Democrats party, said on X in response to the video that “in the territories, armed Jewish militias operate unchecked”.

    Settler violence, which has also been on the rise for years, has surged since the outbreak of the war in Gaza. The UN documented at least 27 attacks by settlers against Palestinians that resulted in property damage, casualties or both, between 15 and 21 July, in the West Bank.

    see also: https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/statement-report/optisrael-statement-solidarity-palestinian-human-rights-defenders-risk-occupied

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c776x78517po

    https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Awdah_Hathaleen

    https://mailchi.mp/2a4342b25255/hrdf-10982507?e=51113b9c0e Read here the words of chairperson of the board, Sahar Vardi.

    Israel/OPT: Killing of prominent Palestinian West-Bank activist Awda Al-Hathaleen demands justice and accountability  
    Israel/OPT: Killing of prominent Palestinian West-Bank activist Awda Al-Hathaleen demands justice and accountability  
    Israel/OPT: Killing of prominent Palestinian West-Bank activist Awda Al-Hathaleen demands justice and accountability  

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • ‘Right to choose’ key to Cook Islands-NZ relationship, says Peters

    By Teuila Fuatai, RNZ Pacific senior journalist

    New Zealand’s foreign minister says Cook Islanders are free to choose whether their country continues in free association with New Zealand.

    Winston Peters made the comment at a celebration of the 60th anniversary of the constitution of the Cook Islands in Auckland today.

    Peters attended the community event hosted by the Upokina Taoro (East Cook Island Community Group) as part of an official contingent of MPs. Minister for Pacific Peoples Shane Reti and Labour Party deputy leader Carmel Sepuloni also attended.

    “We may not be perfect, but we’ve never wavered from our responsibilities wherever they lay,” Peters said.

    “For six decades, we have stood by ready to support the Cook Islands economic and social development, while never losing sight of the fact that our financial support comes from the taxes of hard working New Zealanders,”

    This week’s anniversary comes at a time of increasing tension between the two nations.

    At the heart of that are four agreements between the Cook Islands and China, which Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown signed in February.

    NZ funding halted
    The New Zealand government said it should have been consulted over the agreements, but Brown disagreed.

    The diplomatic disagreement has resulted in New Zealand halting $18.2 million in funding to the Cook Islands, which is a realm country of New Zealand.

    Under that arrangement — implemented in 1965 — the country governs its own affairs, but New Zealand provides some assistance with foreign affairs, disaster relief and defence.

    Peters today said the “beating heart” of the Cook Islands-New Zealand relationship was the “right to choose”.

    “Cook Islanders are free to choose where to live, how to live, and to worship whichever God they wish.”

    After his formal address, Peters was asked by media about the rift between the governments of the Cooks Islands and New Zealand.

    ‘Carefully crafted’
    He referred back to his “carefully crafted” speech which he said showed “precisely what the New Zealand position is now”.

    Brown has previously said that if New Zealand could not afford to fund the country’s national infrastructure investment plan – billed at $650 million — the Cook Islands would need to look elsewhere.

    Brown also said in at the time that funding the development needs of the Cook Islands was a major motivator in signing the agreements with China.

    Discussions between officials from both countries regarding the diplomatic disagreement were ongoing.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Debunked – Israel’s top 10 lies on Gaza, as exposed by Zeteo

    Pacific Media Watch

    The New York Times recently revealed that the Israeli military has “never found proof” that Hamas has “systematically stolen aid from the United Nations” — a lie that has been told by Israeli officials for months now, reports the independent media company Zeteo.

    And the lie has also been repeated by multiple Western media outlets, including the New York Times itself.

    With the Israeli and US government telling so many lies about the violence in the Middle East, and with so much false reporting circulating in mainstream media around what even Israeli rights groups are now calling a genocide in Gaza — here’s a full list of groups Zeteo reported — many people are understandably looking for a fresh breeze of truth.

    “We hear you, we feel you, and we will gladly debunk as many falsehoods as we can for you,” says Mehdi Hasan, the British-American progressive broadcaster, writer, and founder of Zeteo.

    “Debunked!” is back. Watch Mehdi shatter the top 10 lies you’ve been seeing and hearing about this genocide for the past 22 months — in under three minutes!


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Australian media faces existential crisis after realising ‘free Palestine’ might extend well beyond university lawns and Instagram

    COMMENTARY: By Clancy Overell, editor of The Betoota Advocate

    After years of sitting on the fence and looking the other way, the Australian media is today reckoning with the fact that showing basic sympathy towards the starving and war-weary people of Gaza is actually a very mainstream sentiment.

    This explosive moment of self-reflection has rocked newsrooms all over the country, from the talk back radio stations to the increasingly gun-shy ABC.

    This comes as the tens of thousands of everyday Australians marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in solidarity in protest against the abhorrent war crimes being committed by Israel against the Palestinian people.

    • READ MORE: More satire about Israel’s horrendous war on Gaza

    This existential media feeling of extreme detachment from the general public is only amplified by the undeniable fact this crowd actually isn’t even that representative of the actual number of people who are horrified by the events taking place on the Gaza Strip — as the extreme weather conditions clearly shrank the overall number of people who would have otherwise attended this record-breaking protest.

    The crowd that did make it there is still one of the biggest to ever march the Harbour Bridge, many who braved heavy winds and rain to join the chants “ceasefire now” and “free Palestine”.

    With a large number of high-profile household names such as Julian Assange and former NSW Premier Bob Carr making their presence known, it’s now very difficult for the media to now write these protesters off as “terrorist sympathisers”.

    It’s also clear that the plight of the Palestinians is something that ripples far beyond the university lawns and instagram timelines that have since been dismissed as the musings of “detached inner-city elites” and “brazen antisemites”.

    Sydney’s “Rainy Sunday” march also comes as a blow to both the Federal and State Labor governments, which have worked tirelessly to squash these protests using police powers and anti-free speech laws.

    The Betoota Advocate is an Australian satirical news website that takes its name from the deserted regional western Queensland town of Betoota but is actually published in Sydney.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Palestine surveillance author says Australian protesters ‘outraged’ by Israel’s war on Gaza

    Pacific Media Watch

    Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory, a book on the Israeli arms and surveillance industry, says Australian protesters are “outraged” not just by what Israel is doing in Gaza, but also by the Australian government’s “complicity”.

    Loewenstein, who also spoke at the rally, told Al Jazeera that Australia has, for many years, including since the start of the war, been part of the global supply chain for the F-35 fighter jets that Israel has been using in attacking the besieged enclave.

    “A lot of Australians are aware of this,” he said. “We are deeply complicit, and people are angry that their government is doing little more than talk at this point.”

    Asked about opinions within Israel, Loewenstein, who is an Australian-German and Jewish, condemned what he called a prevailing climate of “genocide mania” and also criticised the role of the mainstream media in not reporting accurate coverage of the reality in Gaza.

    Organisers of the Palestine Action Group Sydney-led march across the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge have said at least 100,000 people — and perhaps as many as 300,000 — took part in the biggest pro-Palestinian held in Australia. Police say more than 90,000.

    Mehreen Faruqi, the New South Wales senator for the left-wing Greens party, addressed the crowd gathered at central Sydney’s Lang Park before the march, calling for the “harshest sanctions on Israel”, accusing its forces of “massacring” Palestinians.

    At least 175 people, including 93 children, have died of starvation and malnutrition across the enclave since Israel launched its war on Gaza in October 2023, according to latest Gaza Health Ministry figures.

    The horrifying images of Gazans being deliberately starved is adding to the pressure on Western governments which have been enthusiastic supporters of Israel’s genocide, reports the Sydney-based Green-Left magazine.

    Former US President Barack Obama has started to push for an end to Israel’s military operations. Sections of Israeli society, including five human rights organisations, now agree that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

    Media corporations, such as BBC, AFP, AP and Reuters, which have been complicit in manufacturing consent for “Israel has a right to defend itself” line, are now condemning the killing of Palestinian journalists.

    These shifts reflect the scale of the horror, but also the success of the global Palestine solidarity movement.

    It is undermining support for Israel — a factor which is starting to weigh on Western governments. Only 32% of Americans approve of Israel’s military action in Gaza, according to a new Gallup poll.

    With the exception of Ireland and Spain, Western governments have refused to describe Israel’s war as an act of genocide.


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Hiroshima 80 years on – why AUKUS is imperial madness and needs to be stopped

    Three times this year the world has been close to nuclear catastrophe of one form or another — the India–Pakistan conflict, the ongoing Ukraine–Russia war and more recently the Israel/US–Iran “12 day war”. Here is one of the speeches at the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima Day in Sydney before the “March for Humanity” on Sydney Harbour Bridge.

    COMMENTARY: By Peter Murphy

    I acknowledge the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation as the Traditional Owners of the Land on which we are gathered and pay respect to their Elders past and present. I also acknowledge the Pitjantjatjara and other peoples of the APY lands who suffered the direct impact of nuclear weapons tests at Maralinga and nearby in the 1950s and early 1960s.

    I am standing in here for Michael Wright, the national secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, who was unable to take up our invitation to be here today.

    The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) has a very solid record for opposing the nuclear industry and nuclear weapons, and really campaigned hard on this issue against Peter Dutton and the Coalition in the May federal elections.

    The ETU campaigned in Dutton’s seat of Dickson and he lost his seat to Labor’s Ali France. You have to conclude that among the many reasons that Australian voters deserted the Coalition and Dutton, the Coalition’s nuclear energy policy was a big one.

    Since the election, the Coalition has continued to entertain the idea of a nuclear-powered Australia, showing that they just refuse to listen to the Australian people. But they are only too happy to listen to and take the money of the fossil fuel corporations and the nuclear power companies like Westinghouse, who are the ones who benefit from government policies to foster nuclear power.

    They are determined to delay the transition to renewable energy as long as possible, whatever the cost to all of us in runaway climate disasters.

    The ETU’s official policy against the nuclear industry dates back to the 1950s, resulting from the shared experiences of ETU members who returned from Japan after the Second World War. In the decades since, the ETU has regularly revisited this policy to learn more about the nuclear fuel cycle, changes and advances to technologies, technical interaction with the network and economic viability.

    Opposed nuclear industry
    Let’s honour those long-gone ETU members who recognised the crimes that took place at Nagasaki and Hiroshima 80 years ago by vigorously opposing the nuclear industry and nuclear weapons today. And let’s remember some other Australians who were there then — Tom Uren saw the mushroom cloud over Nagasaki from the copper mine where he was working as a prisoner of war; and Wilfred Burchett, the journalist, who first told the world from Hiroshima about radiation sickness.

    Nuclear power stations generate radioactive waste such as spent reactor fuel, reprocessing effluents, and contaminated tools and work clothing. These materials can remain radioactive and hazardous to human health for tens of thousands of years.

    And this is the kind of waste that comes from nuclear-powered submarines, during regular maintenance, and at the end of their life — 30 years we have been told for the AUKUS submarine nuclear reactors.

    This waste will need to be trucked across the country on public roads to be disposed of in a nuclear waste facility.

    But, Australia does not have a dedicated national radioactive waste facility. And the Albanese government is refusing to say where they plan to put that waste.

    The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and those at the nuclear tests sites in Nevada, the Marianas, French Polynesia, Algeria, Kazakhstan, and the Monte Bello Islands, Emu Fields, Maralinga in Australia have been living with these nuclear wastes in their environment for up to 80 years.

    We don’t want this to go any further in Australia or anywhere else in the world.

    Democratic failure over AUKUS
    How dare the Albanese government commit future generations to somehow keep that deadly nuclear waste safe for tens of thousands of years.

    The ETU stood up at the August 2023 ALP National Conference and opposed the AUKUS project, spelling out these concerns and also the democratic failure of Labor to consult the public and the Parliament before committing to the AUKUS deal.

    The Albanese leadership tried very hard to make sure that AUKUS was not debated at that ALP National Conference. So it was a victory first of all to have the debate and openly discuss the big problems with AUKUS.

    The pro-AUKUS case was so weak that the Defence Industry Minister at the time, Pat Conroy, defended it by accusing the critics of being like the appeasers of the Nazis in the 1930s. In doing so he was saying that China is a fascist state and it is the enemy we have to fight with these hopeless submarines.

    The grotesque comparison of us and of China to Nazis is ironically more appropriate for Trump and the USA, who are right now purging people of colour from the streets and workplaces of the United States and supporting a genocide in Gaza.

    AUKUS is one building block in the US plan to wage war on China to remove its capacity to challenge US primacy in this region and world-wide. A conga line of US military commanders and cabinet secretaries have made this clear.

    It is imperial madness writ large.

    The deeper reason
    And this is the deeper reason why we must oppose AUKUS, because we have to stop this deadly drive for a war between nuclear-armed superpowers. Such a war would almost certainly go nuclear, the world would go into nuclear winter, there would be no winners and huge huge casualties.

    Japan, the Philippines, and Australia would be very early targets in such a war.

    We remember that 200,000 people, almost all civilians, men women and children of all ages, were killed by those two nuclear bombs 80 years ago, and endless suffering has continued down to this day.

    So we recommit to opposing nuclear weapons and the nuclear industry which produces them. We commit to getting Australia’s signature on the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons.

    We commit to stopping AUKUS. We commit to stopping the active US and Australian plan for a war with China.

    This is edited from Peter Murphy’s speech at the 80th anniversary Horoshima Day rally for the Sydney Peace and Justice Coalition and Sydney Anti-AUKUS Coalition on 3 August 2025.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange joins Sydney Gaza humanitarian protest as thousands cross bridge

    Asia Pacific Report

    WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was among the tens of thousands of protesters in Australia staging a “humanitarians for Gaza” march today across the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge.

    The transparency media campaigner and activist, who moved back to his native Australia last year, after reaching a plea deal with the US government to avoid possible life imprisonment for publishing classified anti-war government information, was not expected to speak at the protest.

    The bridge was closed for Australia’s biggest pro-Palestine march.

    WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Sydney Harbour Bridge humanitarian protest for Gaza today
    WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Sydney Harbour Bridge humanitarian protest for Gaza today. Image: X/@EllaCoo55777104

    Protesters marched across the bridge this afternoon after the Supreme Court of New South Wales refused an application by police to ban the demonstration.

    Police had raised concerns about public safety and the potential for a “crowd crush”, but Justice Belinda Rigg sided with the organisers, finding that they had convincingly explained the reasons why they believed the Israeli genocide in Gaza demanded an urgent response.

    Palestine Action Group Sydney, the organiser of the march, said before the protest that it expected 50,000 people to attend. However, heavy rain was a dampener but thousands still marched onto the bridge with estimates being put at 25,000.

    The activist group said it wanted to highlight what the United Nations has described as worsening famine conditions in Gaza.

    News media reported that the Israeli military had killed at least 62 people in Gaza yesterday, including 38 people desperately seeking food aid.

    A 17-year-old Palestinian was reported to have died of starvation, one of at least seven Palestinians who died of malnutrition within the past 24 hours across Gaza, report medical sources.

    The death toll from Israel’s 22-month war on the besieged enclave has reached at least 61,709, including including 17,492 children.


    Australia protests for Gaza                              Video: Al Jazeera

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Israel closes 88% of cases of alleged war crimes or abuse without charges – report

    Conflict monitoring group Action on Armed Violence says Israel is seeking to create a ‘pattern of impunity’

    Nearly nine out of 10 Israeli military investigations into allegations of war crimes or abuses by its soldiers since the start of the war in Gaza have been closed without finding fault or left without resolution, according to a conflict monitor.

    Unresolved investigations include the killing of at least 112 Palestinians queueing for flour in Gaza City in February 2024, Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) said, and an airstrike that killed 45 in an inferno at a tented camp in Rafah in May 2024.

    Continue reading…

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

  • Human Rights Obligations At Canadian Embassies Dead On Arrival

    Over the winter, hundreds of demonstrators in the city of Bucaramanga, Colombia denounced a Canadian gold mine owned by Aris Mining in the eastern Andean wetlands. They were rallied by the Comité Santurbán, a collective of activists protecting the vulnerable Santurbán watershed, known as a páramo, from industrial mining.

    Opposition has been ongoing for at least 16 years. But this past December, members of the Comité were designated by a group supporting the Canadian mine as “persona non grata.” In October, they were labelled as “enemies of progress in Santander” and accused of being responsible for “the deterioration of the country’s heritage”.

    The post Human Rights Obligations At Canadian Embassies Dead On Arrival appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Israel backing Gaza ‘gangs’ to create unlivable chaos, says academic

    Asia Pacific Report

    While the Israeli government claims it is backing “clans” in Gaza to counter the resistance movement Hamas, the groups it supports more closely resemble criminal gangs, says a British-based security specialist.

    Dr Rob Geist Pinfold, international security lecturer at King’s College London, says: “These are criminal gangs. Many were in prison before October 7 for drug offences, not for being political dissidents.

    “They rob Palestinians on the streets. They feed off and contribute to the chaos and disorder,” he told Al Jazeera.

    “Many of these people, like Yasser Abu Shabab, are outcasts from their clans. Israel has basically chosen the least popular people in Gaza to arm and equip.

    “It’s not trying to create a viable political alternative to Hamas, it’s identifying people who thrive off chaos and encouraging them to further that chaos.”

    Dr Pinfold said Israel appeared to be intentionally sowing chaos in Gaza to make the territory “unlivable”.

    “It used to look like this chaos in Gaza was the product of Israel not having a day-after plan,” he said. “But I think it is now evident that this chaos is . . .  part of the day-after plan, which is a grander strategy to make Gaza unlivable in the long term.”

    Arming criminal gangs
    To accomplish this, Israel is arming the criminal gangs that “thrive off chaos” and funnelling the little aid coming in through the dysfunctional and violence-ridden GHF [Gaza Humanitarian Foundation] system.

    From Israel’s perspective, “I actually think this is working very well”, he said, “because its undeclared aims are to create chaos and ensure Gaza becomes unlivable”.

    “Unfortunately, so far, that is proving to be a very successful strategy.”

    Earlier this week it was announced that the death toll had topped 60,430 people (not including the tens of thousands buried under the rubble, or missing and believed dead). This number of dead included more than 18,000 children.

    Also, 148,722 wounded were wounded.

    Already there have been 162 deaths from starvation in Gaza, 92 of them children and the predictions are dire.

    Also, more than 1300 Palestinians have been killed near the GHF aid depots.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • US Abducts, Illegally Deports Mother, Child with Cancer, Suit Says

    Immigration officers abducted a mother and her two children, detained them in a hotel room, and then illegally deported them to Honduras — all within the span of less than 24 hours, a new lawsuit says. The children, a 7-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy, are both U.S. citizens. The boy has stage four kidney cancer. On July 31, the National Immigration Project and others filed suit on behalf…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Trump Admin Halts Lawsuits Targeting Civil Rights Abuses in Prisons, Group Homes

    The Trump administration has halted litigation aimed at stopping civil rights abuses of prisoners in Louisiana and mentally ill people living in South Carolina group homes. The Biden administration filed lawsuits against the two states in December after Department of Justice investigations concluded that they had failed to fix violations despite years of warnings.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Ari Paul on Genocide in Gaza, Scout Katovich on Forced Institutionalization

     

    Right-click here to download this episode (“Save link as…”).

     

    NYT: No, Israel Is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza

    New York Times (7/22/25)

    This week on CounterSpin: The mainstream US media debate on the starvation and violence and war crimes in Gaza still, in July 2025, makes room for Bret Stephens, who explains in the country’s paper of record that Israel can’t be committing genocide as rights groups claim, because if they were, they’d be much better at it. Says Stephens:

    It may seem harsh to say, but there is a glaring dissonance to the charge that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. To wit: If the Israeli government’s intentions and actions are truly genocidal—if it is so malevolent that it is committed to the annihilation of Gazans—why hasn’t it been more methodical and vastly more deadly?

    “It may seem harsh to say” is a time-honored line from those who want to note but justify human suffering, or excuse the crimes of the powerful. It looks bad to you, is the message, because you’re stupid. If you were smart, like me, you’d understand that your empathy is misplaced; these people suffering need to suffer in order to…. Well, they don’t seem to feel a need to fully explain that part. Something about democracy and freeing the world from, like, suffering.

    It’s true that corporate media are now gesturing toward engaging questions of Israeli war crimes against Palestinians. But what does that amount to at this late date? We’ll talk about corporate media’s Gaza coverage with independent reporter and frequent FAIR.org contributor Ari Paul.

     

    Disability Scoop: Trump Order Sparks Concerns About Forced Institutionalization

    Disability Scoop (8/1/25)

    Also on the show: The Americans with Disabilities Act is generally acknowledged in July, with a lot of anodyne “come a long way, still a long way to go” type of reporting. There’s an opening for a different sort of coverage this month, as the Trump administration is actively taking apart laws that protect disabled people in the workplace, and cutting off healthcare benefits, and disabled kids’ educational rights, and rescinding an order that would have moved disabled workers to at least the federal minimum wage; and, with a recent executive order, calling on localities to forcibly institutionalize any unhoused people someone decides is mentally ill or drug-addicted or just living on the street.

    Does that serve the hedge funds pricing homes out of reach of even full-time workers? Yes. Does it undercut years of evidence-based work about moving people into homes and services? Absolutely. Does it aim to rocket us back to a dark era of criminalizing illness and disability and poverty? Of course. But Trump calls it “ending crime and disorder,” so you can bet elite media will honor that viewpoint in their reporting. We’ll get a different view from Scout Katovich, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Trone Center for Justice and Equality.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • Israeli author David Grossman says his country is committing genocide in Gaza

    Writer says for many years he has refused to use word but now must ‘with immense pain and with a broken heart’

    The award-winning Israeli author David Grossman has described his country’s campaign in Gaza as a genocide and said he now “can’t help” but use the term.

    “I ask myself: how did we get here?” the celebrated writer and peace activist told the Italian daily La Repubblica in an interview published on Friday.

    Continue reading…

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

  • Bridging the Gap – Annual Report 2024 DefendDefenders on Africa

    The year 2024 witnessed a deteriorating political and human rights climate, with the war in Sudan, police violence in Kenya, ethnic conflict in Ethiopia and political instability in the Sahel intensifying threats against human rights defenders (HRDs). Despite the risks, the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project (DefendDefenders) and the Pan African Human Rights Defenders Network (AfricanDefenders) remained steadfast in providing HRDs with essential protection support, supported amplifying of their voices, and enhancing their capacity to navigate the environments.

    Our protection efforts were central to our work as HRDs faced heightened threats. DefendDefenders provided a total of 643 protection grants (493 emergency grants and 150 direct assists under the Ubuntu Hub Cities Initiative). AfricanDefenders strengthened partnerships with the Elisabeth-Selbert-Initiative, the Shelter Cities Initiative, and the University of Pretoria’s Centre for Human Rights to facilitate the relocation and protection of HRDs at risk.

    On the advocacy front, we remained committed to ensuring that HRDs had a voice at regional, and international levels. At the UN Human Rights Council, we advocated for the renewal of critical mandates, including the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan and the Special Rapporteur on Eritrea. Additionally, we launched the report Is the Tide Turning? which analyses African states’ voting patterns on human rights resolutions to inform and shape future advocacy strategies.

    At ACHPR, we facilitated HRDs’ participation in the 79th and 81st ordinary sessions, organized side events, and engaged with civil society organisations. Our involvement in the African Electoral Justice Network underscored our commitment to promoting fair and transparent electoral processes. Additionally, we facilitated a benchmarking trip for ACHPR Commissioners to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, fostering inter-regional collaboration on human rights protection. We conducted solidarity missions to Kenya and Senegal, standing with indigenous women HRDs, grassroots defenders, and civil society leaders. We also co-hosted a global consultation with outgoing and incoming UN Special Rapporteurs on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association, addressing emerging threats to civic space and climate justice activism.

    We strengthened national HRD coalitions across the East and Horn of Africa, reinforcing networks for collective advocacy and protection. Our 7th Focal Point Meeting brought together members of the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Network to assess civic space trends, evaluate our 2021-2025 Action Plan, and strategise for the 2026-2030 period. As part of this gathering, we also convened an inter-mechanism dialogue between HRDs, the Chairperson of the ACHPR, and the Chairperson of the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances to enhance HRDs engagement with the special mechanisms.

    To sustain HRDs’ resilience, we prioritised capacity-building, equipping them with tools to navigate an increasingly hostile environment. Over the year, we trained 990 HRDs through more than 62 workshops on physical security, digital security, wellbeing, monitoring and documentation, Kobo Toolbox, and resource mobilisation. The year concluded with the launch of our annual thematic report, Rocky Ground and Shifting Sands: Human Rights Defenders Working in the Context of Elections in East Africa, offering insights into the challenges HRDs face in electoral contexts in Burundi, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.

    Download Report Here:

    https://defenddefenders.org/annual-report-2024/

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Bloodshed at GHF-run Gaza aid sites ‘a great sin’, says former top UN official

    Asia Pacific Report

    A former senior UN aid official has condemned the bloodshed at the notorious US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid food depots, describing the distribition system as having turned into a “catastrophe”.

    The number of aid seekers killed continues to climb daily beyond 1000.

    Martin Griffiths, director of Mediation Group International and the former Under Secretary General of the UN Humanitarian Affairs Office, said: “I think when many of us saw the first plans of the GHF to launch this operation in Gaza, we were immediately appalled by the way they were proposing to manage it.”

    “It was clearly militarised. They’d have their own security contractors,” he told Al Jazeera.

    “They’d have [Israeli military] camps placed right beside them. We know now that they are, in fact, under instructions by [the Israeli military].

    “All of this is a crime. All of this is a deep betrayal of humanitarian values.

    “But what I at least did not sufficiently anticipate was the killing and was the absolutely critical result of this operation, this sole humanitarian operation allowed by Israel in Gaza,” Griffiths added.

    “The 1000 killed are an incredible statistic. I had no idea it would go that high and it’s going on daily. It’s not stopping.

    “I think it’s a catastrophe more than a disappointment,” he said. “I think it’s a great sin. I think it’s a great crime.”

    Aid analyst Martin Griffiths
    Humanitarian aid advocate Martin Griffiths . . . We know now that [GHF] are, in fact, under instructions by [the Israeli military]. All of this is a crime.” Image: Wikipedia
    Commenting about US envoy Steve Witkoff and US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee’s planned visit to GHF-run aid distribution sites in Gaza, he said this was “likely to be choreographed”.

    However, he acknowledged it was still an “important form of witness”.

    “I’m glad that they’re going,” Griffiths said.

    “Maybe they will see things that are unexpected. I can’t imagine because we’ve seen so much. But I don’t see it leading to a major change.

    “If I was one of the two million Gazans starving to death, this is a day I would like to go to an aid distribution point,” Griffiths added.

    “There’s slightly less risk probably than any other day.”

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • A list of all the experts saying Israel is committing genocide in Gaza

    Genocide scholars, human rights groups, and ethical legal experts agree that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. Some reached that conclusion before the end of 2023. Others reached it in 2024. And some took until 2025 to use the word genocide.

    Below is a comprehensive list of those figures and organisations, including Israeli genocide scholars and human rights groups, Palestinian human rights groups, international human rights and humanitarian organisations, international genocide scholars, Global South governments, UN experts, and legal scholars from around the world.

    Section 1 – Israeli genocide scholars

    1) Omer Bartov

    Israeli genocide scholar Omer Bartov, from Brown University, warned a month into Israel’s 2023 assault on Gaza that the apartheid state was probably committing war crimes, and that this could turn into a genocide. In August 2024, he lamented “the utter inability of Israeli society today to feel any empathy for the population of Gaza”, adding that, by May 2024, “it was no longer possible to deny that Israel was engaged in systematic war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal actions”. In July 2025, he said:

    My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.

    He is not anti-Zionist or anti-Israel, but regretted the long-term development of a culture of dehumanising Palestinians. This has done so much damage, he said, especially amid the “accelerated, on-steroids transformation” into a state openly committing genocide since 2023.

    2) Raz Segal

    In October 2023, Israeli genocide researcher Raz Segal called Gaza “A Textbook Case of Genocide”, saying Israeli politicians had “loudly proclaimed” their genocidal intent with “dehumanizing language” that “leaders in the West reinforced”. He stressed that:

    Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is quite explicit, open, and unashamed

    He faced a backlash for speaking out. But he insisted that opposing genocide was a necessary struggle against all forms of discrimination, including antisemitism. And he added that it was a “struggle for the significance of truth”.

    In 2025, he argued that there was no longer anyone “whose work I respect who doesn’t consider it genocide”.

    3) Shmuel Lederman

    In May 2025, Israeli scholar Shmuel Lederman asserted that:

    the cumulative effect of what Israel is doing in Gaza is genocidal in every sense

    He had previously been reluctant to use the word genocide. But “the total siege that led to images and videos of skeleton-like children in the style of Somalia/Yemen/Holocaust” made it impossible to avoid doing so. He added:

    I think the second half of 2024 is the point at which a consensus formed among genocide scholars (as well as the human rights organization community) that this is a genocide. Those who perhaps still had doubts—I estimate they dissipated following Israel’s actions since the breaking of the ceasefire [in March 2025]

    4) Amos Goldberg

    Israeli Holocaust Studies professor Amos Goldberg has insisted that:

    For nearly 30 years I have researched and taught the Holocaust, genocide and state violence.

    And I want to tell whoever is willing to listen that what’s happening now in Gaza is a genocide….

    if you read Raphael Lemkin – the Jewish-Polish legal scholar who coined the term ‘genocide’ and was the major driving force behind the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention – what is happening in Gaza now is exactly what he had in mind when he spoke about genocide.

    5) Lee Mordechai

    Israeli history professor Lee Mordechai spent months researching, analysing, and documenting the genocidal assault on Gaza. Having “problems with the fact that academia hasn’t spoken out”, he felt a duty “to do scholarship and to try to improve society”. He concluded that:

    The enormous amount of evidence I have seen… has been enough for me to believe that Israel is currently committing genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza

    He also lamented that:

    Israeli discourse has de-humanized Palestinians to such an extent that the vast majority of Israeli Jews supports the aforementioned measures [in Gaza]… Speaking about Palestinians in genocidal language is legitimate in Israeli discourse

    This “pervasive dehumanization”, he said, is “the key to all of this”:

    Palestinians are widely seen as less than human, based on discourse, behavior and opinions supporting the use of more force in Gaza. Therefore, violent actions against Palestinians are condoned and are often encouraged publicly, especially by key individuals such as the Minister for National Security [Itamar Ben-Gvir], who is particularly popular among younger audiences and soldiers.

    Section 2 – Israeli human rights organisations

    1) B’Tselem

    In July 2025, Israeli human rights group B’tselem published a report with the title “Our Genocide”. It explained that:

    An examination of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli politicians and military commanders about the goals of the attack, leads to the unequivocal conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. In other words: Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip

    And this didn’t happen in a vacuum, it stressed:

    Genocide always occurs within a context: there are conditions that enable it, triggering events, and a guiding ideology. The current onslaught on the Palestinian people, including in the Gaza Strip, must be understood in the context of more than seventy years in which Israel has imposed a violent and discriminatory regime on the Palestinians, taking its most extreme form against those living in the Gaza Strip. Since the State of Israel was established, the apartheid and occupation regime has institutionalized and systematically employed mechanisms of violent control, demographic engineering, discrimination, and fragmentation of the Palestinian collective. These foundations laid by the regime are what made it possible to launch a genocidal attack on the Palestinians immediately after the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023.

    The group also warned that the genocide “may expand to other areas where Palestinians live under Israeli rule”. And it called for the international community to use:

    every means available under international law to stop Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people

    2) Physicians for Human Rights-Israel

    To accompany B’Tselem’s report in July 2025, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI) documented “the deliberate and systematic destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system” in a “legal-medical analysis”. Executive director Dr. Guy Shalev said:

    As people who believe in the sanctity of life, we are obligated to speak the truth: this is genocide, and we must fight it.

    Section 3 – International human rights and humanitarian groups

    Early on in the genocide, Palestinian human rights groups Al-Haq, PCHR, and Al Mezan submitted a request for the International Criminal Court to “consider the inclusion of crimes against humanity, notably apartheid, and the crime of genocide, in the ongoing investigation into the situation in the State of Palestine”. Other human rights and humanitarian groups took longer to openly talk about genocide but, after long investigations and analysis of abundant evidence, they did.

    1) Amnesty International

    Amnesty International is “the world’s largest grassroots human rights organisation”. And in a December 2024 report, it concluded that Israel “has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip”. It insisted that:

    Governments must stop pretending they are powerless to end this genocide, which was enabled by decades of impunity for Israel’s violations of international law.

    The failure of the world to hold the apartheid state to account, Amnesty said, had allowed Israel to unleash:

    hell and destruction on Palestinians in Gaza brazenly, continuously and with total impunity.

    2) Human Rights Watch

    Human Rights Watch followed Amnesty’s call within days, saying:

    Israeli authorities have intentionally deprived Palestinian civilians in Gaza of adequate access to water since October 2023, most likely resulting in thousands of deaths and thus committing the crime against humanity of extermination and acts of genocide

    In April 2025, Human Rights Watch joined Amnesty and Oxfam in a legal intervention at the UK High Court, arguing that the UK government was failing in its duty to prevent genocide. The court later ruled that it didn’t have the authority to intervene, despite emphasising the UK’s responsibility to act. Amnesty’s Sacha Deshmukh insisted in response that:

    The UK has a legal obligation to help prevent and punish genocide and yet it continues to authorise the export of weapons to Israel despite the clear risks that these weapons will be used to commit genocide.

    3) Oxfam

    In January 2025, Oxfam noted that, a year after International Court of Justice (ICJ) measures “demanding that Israel take immediate action to guarantee the protection of the rights of Palestinians in Gaza from acts of genocide”, there had been “no meaningful actions to address Gaza’s dire humanitarian conditions”, causing “the crisis to spiral further in blatant violation of the provisional measures”. The group called for an end to “cycles of neglect and impunity”.

    In July 2025, Oxfam’s Bushra Khalidi went further, saying: 

    Israel’s genocide has thrown Gaza into the final chaotic stages of a full-blown human catastrophe… World leaders have been variously divided, complicit, uncaring, and collectively ineffectual in stopping Israel’s campaign of erasure… Ending Israel’s genocide of Gaza is a test not only of our world order but of our collective humanity.

    4) Doctors Without Borders

    Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has insisted that:

    An unprecedented humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Gaza. MSF is clear: We are witnessing Israel commit genocide… This is not a term we use lightly. Our decision to describe what’s happening in Gaza as a ‘genocide’ is based on nearly two years of extensive, firsthand information from our teams, who are witnessing massive levels of death and destruction by Israeli forces, a campaign of ethnic cleansing and the almost total dismantling of the health care system… Over the past 21 months, Israeli authorities have been responsible for mass killings, indiscriminate attacks, forced displacement, repeated failure to protect civilians, the deliberate destruction of homes and vital infrastructure, and the weaponisation of hunger in what amounts to collective punishment.

    And it asserted:

    There have been multiple and well-documented dehumanising statements by Israeli officials calling for the annihilation of the population, or their transfer out of the Strip. The only reasonable inference is that the intention is to erase the Palestinian people from Gaza. This is why we believe that a genocide is taking place… In the face of such atrocities, sanctioned and enabled by Israel’s allies, especially the United States and the United Kingdom, we believe it is our moral obligation to speak out with clarity.

    5) Medico International

    German organisation Medico International also insisted, after a year of Israel ignoring the measures the ICJ demanded to prevent genocide, that the apartheid state had “dramatically worsened an already intolerable situation”. And it said:

    The conclusion is clear, and medico shares this analysis, that Israeli actions constitute genocide. Even though ICJ proceedings are still ongoing, the voluminous in-depth investigations by international human rights organizations and the documentation by local organizations, including long-standing partners of medico international, are too abundant to ignore. Therefore, medico will embrace usage of the term “genocide” to describe actions of the Israeli state in Gaza since October 2023.

    6) The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention

    Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin proposed condemning the crime of genocide back in 1944. And eight decades later, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention asserted in 2024 that:

    One might even say that Lemkin’s definition fits the situation in Palestine for the past 76 years.

    In June 2025, as the US vetoed yet another UN call for an Israel ceasefire in Gaza, the institute went further, insisting that:

    There can be no doubt now that the #UnitedStates is a perpetrator of genocide in Palestine.

    It explained:

    The country was founded on genocide and institutionalized a genocidal form of slavery… The enduring mainstream institutions of the state and society remain comfortable with the genocide of non-white people.

    Today, many critics see the Israeli state as an outpost for US imperialism and its global plunder. This fits into the pattern of consistent US support for Israeli war crimes.

    7) Others

    In September 2024, UK humanitarian organisations including Save the Children, Christian Aid, and CAFOD said:

    In January, the International Court of Justice warned there is a risk that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and has ordered that Israel cease actions that might be part of a genocide.

    Considering “the clear and compelling evidence that the Israeli military is violating IHL” (International Humanitarian Law), they asserted, “it is insufficient that the Government has failed to end ALL arms transfers to Israel”.

    Section 4 – International genocide scholars

    In December 2023, dozens of academics warned of “the danger of genocide” in Gaza and called on the world to act. They said:

    We know that genocide is a process, and we recognize that the stage is thus set for violence more severe than the Nakba and not spatially limited to Gaza.

    The Nakba was the process of “permanent displacement of more than half of the Palestinian population” during the violent creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Over five million refugees from this ethnic cleansing event live across the Middle East. Around 70% of Gaza’s population are descendants of Nakba refugees.

    According to a Dutch media report in May 2025:

    leading genocide researchers are surprisingly unanimous: the Netanyahu government, they say, is in that process [of genocide]—according to the majority, even in its final stages.

    International Association of Genocide Scholars president Melanie O’Brien came to the conclusion that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza as a result of Israel’s “deliberate withholding of food, water, shelter, and sanitation”. For all the people the report interviewed, it was “the whole picture” – the sum of many different war crimes – that led them to see the actions in Gaza as genocide. One of these, Martin Shaw, wrote separately that politicians and media outlets have avoided the term ‘genocide’ for a reason:

    Tame media will ban the very word from the airwaves so as not to offend politicians. Political leaders themselves will avoid talking about genocide, to protect themselves not only from demands to stop it, but also from scrutiny of their complicity – Israel has been helped by RAF surveillance, British-made weapons and parts for its bombers, and diplomatic support, all of which the Starmer Government has continued.

    Canadian scholar of international law William Schabas, meanwhile, has stressed that “there’s nothing comparable” to Israel’s genocide in Gaza “in recent history”. He insisted:

    Of all the cases that have come before the International Court of Justice dealing with the Genocide Convention (there are now 19 of them), South Africa’s case is the strongest.

    A. Dirk Moses, editor of the Journal of Genocide Research, has said the mass murder of civilians in Gaza is:

    not unintentional, and it’s not even collateral, it’s calculated… And when you marry that with the public statements of Israeli leaders, then it’s impossible to ignore that there’s a fusion of military and genocidal logics.

    Human rights academic Alonso Gurmendi took an in-depth look at the scholarly debate about genocide in Gaza in July 2025. And he said:

    most, if not all, scholars writing outside the framework of ideological Zionism have now concluded that Israel is in fact committing genocide

    Section 5 – Legal experts

    1) South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice

    In December 2023, South Africa took Israel to court to try and stop its genocidal crimes in Gaza. It filed a case with the UN’s highest court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The case quickly gained the backing of other nations.

    In January 2024, the ICJ ruled that:

    at least some of the rights claimed by South Africa and for which it is seeking protection are plausible. This is the case with respect to the right of the Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts identified in Article III, and the right of South Africa to seek Israel’s compliance with the latter’s obligations under the Convention.

    In short, it found there were grounds to investigate further and called for action to prevent the possibility of genocide. A final ICJ judgment on whether genocide has occurred in Gaza, however, may not come until at least 2027.

    South Africa has also been a key organiser of the Hague Group. This is a bloc of majority Global South states that has launched concrete efforts to “halt the genocide in Gaza”.

    2) UN legal expert Francesca Albanese

    Francesca Albanese is an international lawyer specialising in human rights, and is the UN’s special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. In March 2024, she found that there were “reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating that Israel has committed genocide has been met”. Then, in October 2024, she put the genocide in the context of Israel’s “decades-long process of territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing aimed at liquidating the Palestinian presence in Palestine”, insisting that genocide was “integral and instrumental to the aim of full Israeli colonization of Palestinian land while removing as many Palestinians as possible”. She criticised states for their inaction:

    A genocide and a man-made humanitarian catastrophe are unfolding in front of us and in Gaza. I regret to see so many member states are avoiding acknowledging the suffering of the Palestinian people and instead look away

    In a June 2025 report, meanwhile, she called out corporate complicity in the genocide, saying the “engine of racial capitalism” had enabled and propped up Israel’s transformation into an “economy of genocide”. She stressed:

    The corporate sector, including its executives, must be held to account, as a necessary step towards ending the genocide and disassembling the global system of racialized capitalism that underpins it.

    She has also argued that Britain and other states have violated their obligations under international law to prevent genocide, insisting that there should be an investigation into the complicity of UK prime minister Keir Starmer and others. Despite being a human rights lawyer himself, Starmer has long engaged in genocide denialism regarding Gaza.

    Together with academics Luigi Daniele and Nicola Perugini, Albanese co-wrote a book with the title Israel Rewrites the Laws of War to Legitimize Genocide in Gaza. The authors looked at “Israel’s use of international humanitarian law (IHL) to justify actions in Gaza that amount to genocide”. The apartheid state, they stressed, has employed “distorted legal discourse to present these actions as compliant with IHL, despite their genocidal nature”. It’s a “legal-political strategy to mask atrocities” which “may enable future genocides globally, under the guise of lawful warfare”.

    3) Hundreds of scholars and practitioners

    In October 2023, a public statement of “over 800 scholars and practitioners of international law, conflict studies and genocide studies” said:

    we are compelled to sound the alarm about the possibility of the crime of genocide being perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip

    It added that genocide had already been on the radar for years:

    The pre-existing conditions in the Gaza Strip had already prompted discussions of genocide prior to the current escalation – such as by the National Lawyers Guild in 2014, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in 2014, and the Center for Constitutional Rights in 2016. Scholars have warned over the years that the siege of Gaza may amount to a “prelude to genocide” or a “slow-motion genocide”. The prevalence of racist and dehumanising language and hate speech in social media was also noted in a warning issued in July 2014 by the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect, in response to Israel’s conduct against the protected Palestinian population

    “All states should immediately act”, they said, to ensure “the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide”. However, they noted that:

    the Security Council is compromised by the United States and the United Kingdom (both permanent veto-holding members) sending military forces to the eastern Mediterranean in support of Israel

    4) University Network for Human Rights

    In May 2024, the University Network for Human Rights concluded, after “a thorough legal analysis”, that:

    Israel has committed genocidal acts of killing, causing serious harm to, and inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, a protected group that forms a substantial part of the Palestinian people.

    It added:

    Israel’s genocidal acts in Gaza have been motivated by the requisite genocidal intent

    Law professor Susan Akram, who participated in the analysis, said:

    there is consensus amongst the international human rights legal community, many other legal and political experts, including many Holocaust scholars, that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

    She and other human rights lawyers wrote a year later that:

    The significance of Israel’s apartheid has been overshadowed by its genocidal assault on Gaza. But the two are inextricably linked. The same racial hatred fuels apartheid as much as it does genocide.

    5) The Center for Constitutional Rights

    In October 2023, the Center for Constitutional Rights warned of “Israel’s unfolding crime of genocide”, saying:

    there is clear evidence that Israel is attempting to commit, if not actively committing, genocide in the occupied Palestinian territory, and specifically against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.

    It added that the USA was likely playing a “role in furthering genocide”.

    A year later, it added that:

    Decades of U.S. and Israeli impunity for war crimes and crimes against humanity have made this genocide not only possible, but inevitable.

    6) Nimer Sultany

    Nimer Sultany, human rights lawyer and editor-in-chief of the Palestine Yearbook of International Law, wrote in May 2024 that:

    the military logic of defeating an enemy in war has been crossed into the genocidal logic of elimination. This logic of elimination is evident in many expressions of genocidal intent by Israeli officials and soldiers that South Africa’s December 2023 application to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) enumerates.

    Too much legal analysis, he said:

    seemed to reserve judgment concerning genocide until after the actual and eventual decimation of Gaza

    He added:

    When South Africa submitted its application to the ICJ it undermined the pro-Israeli western discourse about the “war” and reignited debates about “genocide.”

    He also stressed that:

    The invocation of genocide invites the ongoing debate concerning the shortcomings and limitations of the legal definition.

    For him:

    South Africa’s application to the ICJ is an example of an anticolonial mobilization of the law. An African state that suffered from the yoke of colonialism and apartheid, invoked the crime of genocide against a western-supported colonial apartheid.

    7) Maryam Jamshidi

    Legal scholar Maryam Jamshidi wrote in August 2024 that:

    the extermination of a protected group’s civilian leadership can serve as proof of genocidal intent where it is also accompanied by the elimination of its military personnel, which—much like the destruction of law enforcement—leaves the group “defenceless.”

    She added:

    Instead of undercutting South Africa’s genocide case, Israel’s desired elimination of Hamas provides more proof that its actions satisfy the Convention’s definition of genocide.

    She explained:

    Missing from many accounts of Israel’s genocidal intent, however, is direct engagement with one of Israel’s main counter-arguments to genocide—its aim of obliterating Hamas—and how this also demonstrates an intent to destroy the Palestinians of Gaza as a group.

    And she insisting on the importance of “grappling with these realities head on”.

    8) Lawyers in France

    Lawyers working on behalf of non-governmental organisation Pour la Justice au Proche-Orient sought to take action against French politicians in July 2025. They said that:

    Far from taking concrete measures to prevent the ongoing genocide against the Palestinians, the members of the French executive cited in this communication have continued to support the criminal actions of the government of Israel by providing military, political, economic, diplomatic and propaganda support to that state, including by providing the means to commit the crimes in question.

    9) Legal scholars in Germany

    Stefanie Bock and Kai Ambos are law professors in Germany. And they insisted in June 2025 that:

    as Israel’s warfare continues and becomes increasingly brutal, the evidence for genocide is mounting.

    The evidence for this, they stressed, has “become more compelling in recent days and weeks”. And they added:

    on the whole, the dynamics of the conflict now speak more in favour of genocide than against it.

    Speaking about this assessment, Itamar Mann – an academic at the University of Haifa – asserted that we have already reached a stage where the “only reasonable inference is genocide”, i.e. “that Israel is committing genocide”.

    10) Israeli legal scholars

    Speaking specifically about the Israeli government’s “plan to concentrate the population of Gaza in a so-called “humanitarian city” to be established on the ruins of Rafah”, a group of Israeli “scholars and lecturers at Israeli law faculties specializing in international law and the laws of armed conflict” warned “against the clear and explicit illegality” of such an idea in July 2025. They stressed that:

    If implemented, the plan would constitute a series of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and under certain conditions, could amount to the crime of genocide.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Roch Wamytan: Paris political agreement for New Caledonia ‘not enough’ for Kanaks

    By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific presenter/bulletin editor

    A former New Caledonia Congress president says there are “not enough” benefits for Kanaks in a new “draft” agreement he signed alongside pro and anti-independence stakeholders in France last month.

    Roch Wamytan said that, after 10 days of deadlock discussions in Paris, he failed to secure the pro-independence mandate.

    He told RNZ Pacific that he refused to sign a “final agreement”.

    Instead, he said, he opted for a “draft” agreement, which is what he signed. It has been hailed as “historic” by all parties involved.

    While France maintains its “neutrality”, Wamytan said that at the negotiating table it was two (France and New Caledonia’s pro-France bloc) against one (pro-Kanaky).

    A main point of tension was the electoral law changes, which sparked last year’s civil unrest.

    “We call on France to respect the provisions of international law, which remains our main protective shield until the process of decolonisation and emancipation is completed. Hence, our incessant interventions during negotiations on this subject [electoral law changes],” Wamytan told RNZ Pacific.

    He said it was difficult to understand whether France wanted to decolonise New Caledonia or not.

    Concrete measures
    “We have a lot of concrete measures in this proposed agreement, but the main question is a political question. Where are you [France] going with this? Independence or integration with France?”

    The document, signed in the city of Bougival, involves a series of measures and recognition by France of New Caledonia as a “State” as well as dual citizenship — French and New Caledonian — provided future New Caledonian citizens are French nationals in the first place.

    But this week, New Caledonia’s oldest pro-independence party, the Union Calédonienne (UC), officially rejected the political agreement signed in Paris.

    Wamytan maintains New Caledonia is not France. But the French ambassador to the Pacific has previously told RNZ Pacific New Caledonia is France.

    However, Sonia Backès, the leader of the Caledonian Republicans Party and the president of the Provincial Assembly of Southern Province, says the agreement signed in France is “final”.

    “Roch Wamytan and the pro-independence delegation signed an agreement in Bougival. Since their return to New Caledonia, their political supports have been fiercely critical of the agreement,” her office said via a statement.

    “As a result, radical pro-independence leaders like Roch Wamytan have chosen to renege on their commitment and withdraw their signature. This agreement is final; there is no other viable political balance outside of it.”

    So why did Wamytan sign?
    When asked why he signed the draft agreement when he did not agree with it, he said: “After the 10 days they obliged us to sign something.”

    “We told them that we [didn’t have] the mandate of our parties to sign an agreement, but only a ‘project’ or ‘draft’.

    “It was important for us to return with a paper and to show, to explain, to present, to debate, for the debate of our political party. This is the stage where we are at now, but for the moment, we do not agree with that.

    “We [tried] to explain to [France and pro-France bloc] that we have a problem [with electoral law change being included].

    “This is our problem. So we signed only for one reason . . . that we have to return back home and to explain where we are now, after 10 days of negotiation. [Did we] achieve the objectives, the mandate given by our political parties?”

    He said one thing he wanted to make clear was that what he had signed was not definitive and was now up for negotiation.

    An FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) Congress meeting is set down for this weekend with the Union Calédonienne Congress meeting held a weekend prior.

    Wamytan said that it was now up to the FLNKS members to have their say and decide where to next.

    “They will decide if we accept this draft agreement or we reject,” he said.

    “We have two options: we accept with certain conditions, for example, on the question of the right to vote on the electoral rule. Or for the question of the trajectory from here to independence, through a referendum or the framework proposed by President Macron.”

    “This is an important element to discuss with France, but after this round of discussions.”

    He expected further meetings with France after community consultations.

     

    Communication problem
    Wamytan admitted that the pro-independence negotiators did not communicate clearly about the agreement to their supporters.

    He said after signing the document, President Macron and the pro-France signatories were quick to communicate to the media and their supporters — and the messages filtered to his supporters resulting in anger and frustrations.

    He said the anger has mostly been around the signing itself, with people mistaking the draft proposal as final.

    “The political, pro-Kanaky party were very, very, very angry against us. We did not communicate and this I think is our problem.”

    Bribery allegations
    Wamytan has also dismissed unconfirmed reports that negotiators were bribed to sign a historic deal in Paris.

    He said he was aware of people “chucking accusations of bribery” around, but said they were false.

    “It has never been in the minds of Kanak independence leaders doing such practices,” he said.

    “After the signature of the Matignon Accord 37 years ago, with [FLNKS leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou] and with us after the signature of Nouméa accord in 1998, we heard about the same allegation and some rumours like this.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • New Caledonia’s oldest party for independence rejects ‘Bougival’ deal

    By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific Desk

    New Caledonia’s oldest pro-independence party, the Union Calédonienne (UC), has officially rejected a political agreement on the Pacific territory’s political future signed in Paris last month.

    The text, bearing the signatures of all of New Caledonia’s political parties represented in the local Congress — a total of 18 leaders, both pro-France and pro-independence — is described as a “project” for an agreement that would shape politics.

    Since it was signed in the city of Bougival, west of Paris, on July 12, after 10 days of intense negotiations, it has been dubbed a “bet on trust” and has been described by French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls as a commitment from all signing parties to report to their respective bases and explain its contents.

    The Bougival document involves a series of measures and recognition by France of New Caledonia as a “State” which could become empowered with its own international relations and foreign affairs, provided they do not contradict France’s key interests.

    It also envisages dual citizenship — French and New Caledonian — provided future New Caledonian citizens are French nationals in the first place.

    It also describes a future devolution of stronger powers for each of the three provinces (North, South and Loyalty Islands), especially in terms of tax collection.

    Since it was published, the document, bearing a commitment to defend the text “as is”, was hailed as “innovative” and “historic”.

    New Caledonia’s leaders have started to hold regular meetings — sometimes daily — and sessions with their respective supporters and militants, mostly to explain the contents of what they have signed.

    The meetings were held by most pro-France parties and within the pro-independence camp, the two main moderate parties, UPM (Union Progressiste en Mélanésie) and PALIKA (Kanak Liberation Party).

    Over the past two weeks, all of these parties have strived to defend the agreement, which is sometimes described as a Memorandum of Agreement or a roadmap for future changes in New Caledonia.

    Most of the leaders who have inked the text have also held lengthy interviews with local media.

    Parties who have unreservedly pledged their support to and signed the Bougival document are:

    Pro-France side: Les Loyalistes, Rassemblement-LR, Wallisian-based Eveil Océanien and Calédonie Ensemble

    Pro-independence: UNI-FLNKS (which comprises UPM and PALIKA).

    But one of the main components of the pro-independence movement, the FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) — as its main pillar — the Union Calédonienne, has held a series of meetings indicating their resentment at their negotiators for having signed the contested document.

    UC held its executive committee on July 21, its steering committee on July 26, and FLNKS convened its political bureau on July 23.

    A ‘lure of sovereignty’
    All of these meetings concluded with an increasingly clear rejection of the Bougival document.

    Speaking at a news conference in Nouméa yesterday, UC leaders made it clear that they “formally reject” the agreement because they regard it as a “lure of sovereignty” and does not guarantee either real sovereignty or political balance.

    FLNKS chief negotiator Emmanuel Tjibaou, who is also UC’s chair, told local reporters he understood his signature on the document meant a commitment to return to New Caledonia, explain the text and obtain the approval of the political base.

    “I didn’t have a mandate to sign a political agreement, my mandate was to register the talks and bring them back to our people so that a decision can be made . . . it didn’t mean an acceptance on our part,” he said, mentioning it was a “temporary” document subject to further discussions.

    Tjibaou said some amendments his delegation had put on the table in Bougival “went missing” in the final text.

    Emmanuel Tjibaou
    Union Calédonienne chair and chief FLNKS negotiator Emmanuel Tjibaou . .. some amendments that his delegation had put on the table in Bougival “went missing” in the final text. Image: RNZ Pacific

    ‘Bougival, it’s over’
    “As far as we’re concerned, Bougival, it’s over”, UC vice-president Mickaël Forrest said.

    He said it was now time to move onto a “post-Bougival phase”.

    Meanwhile, the FLNKS also consulted its own “constitutionalists” to obtain legal advice and interpretation of the document.

    In a release about yesterday’s media conference, UC stated that the Bougival text could not be regarded as a balance between two “visions” for Kanaky New Caledonia, but rather a way of “maintaining New Caledonia as French”.

    The text, UC said, had led the political dialogue into a “new impasse” and it left several questions unanswered.

    “With the denomination of a ‘State’, a fundamental law (a de facto Constitution), the capacity to self-organise, and international recognition, this document is perceived as a project for an agreement to integrate (New Caledonia) into France under the guise of a decolonisation”.

    “The FLNKS has never accepted a status of autonomy within France, but an external decolonisation by means of accession to full sovereignty [which] grants us the right to choose our inter-dependencies,” the media release stated.

    The pro-independence party also criticised plans to enlarge the list of people entitled to vote at New Caledonia’s local elections — the very issue that triggered deadly and destructive riots in May 2024.

    It is also critical of a proposed mechanism that would require a vote at the Congress with a minimum majority of 64 percent (two thirds) before any future powers can be requested for transfer from France to New Caledonia.

    Assuming that current population trends and a fresh system of representation at the Congress will allow more representatives from the Southern province (about three quarters of New Caledonia’s population), UC said “in other words, it would be the non-independence [camp] who will have the power to authorise us — or not — to ask for our sovereignty”.

    They party confirmed that it had “formally rejected the Bougival project of agreement as it stands” following a decision made by its steering committee on July 26 “since the fundamentals of our struggle and the principles of decolonisation are not there”.

    Negotiators no longer mandated
    The decision also means that every member of its negotiating team who signed the document on July 12 is now de facto demoted and no longer mandated by the party until a new negotiating team is appointed, if required.

    “Union Calédonienne remains mobilised to arrive at a political agreement that takes into account the achievement of a trajectory towards full sovereignty”.

    On Tuesday, FLNKS president Christian Téin, as an invited guest of Corsica’s “Nazione” pro-independence movement, told French media he declared himself “individually against” the Bougival document, adding this was “far from being akin to full sovereignty”.

    Téin said that during the days that led to the signing of the document in Bougival “the pressure” exerted on negotiators was “terrible”.

    He said the result was that due to “excessive force” applied by “France’s representatives”, the final text’s content “looks like it is the French State and right-wing people who will decide the (indigenous) Kanak people’s future”.

    Facing crime-related charges, Téin is awaiting his trial, but was released from jail, under the condition that he does not return to New Caledonia.

    The leader of a CCAT (field action coordinating cell) created by Union Calédonienne late in 2023 to protest against a proposed French Constitutional amendment to alter voters’ rules of eligibility at local elections, was jailed for one year in mainland France. However, he was elected president of FLNKS in absentia in late August 2024.

    CCAT, meanwhile, was admitted as one of the new components of FLNKS.

    In a de facto split, the two main moderate pillars of FLNKS, UPM and PALIKA, at the same time, distanced themselves from the pro-independence UC-dominated platform, opening a rift within the pro-independence umbrella.

    The FLNKS is scheduled to hold an extraordinary meeting on August 9 (it was initially scheduled to be held on August 2), to “highlight the prospects of the pursuit of dialogue through a repositioning of the pro-independence movement’s political orientations”.

    French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls (centre) shows signatures on the last page of New Caledonia’s new agreement
    French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls (centre) shows signatures on the last page of New Caledonia’s new Bougival agreement earlier this month . . . “If tomorrow there was to be no agreement, it would mean the future, hope, would be put into question” Image: FB/RNZ Pacific

    Valls: ‘I’m not giving up’
    Reacting to the latest UC statements, Valls told French media he called on UC to have “a great sense of responsibility”.

    “If tomorrow there was to be no agreement, it would mean the future, hope, would be put into question. Investment, including for the nickel mining industry, would no longer be possible.”

    “I’m not giving up. Union Calédonienne has chosen to reject, as it stands, the Bougival accord project. I take note of this, but I profoundly regret this position.

    “An institutional void would be a disaster for [New Caledonia]. It would be a prolonged uncertainty, the risk of further instability, the return of violence,” he said.

    “But my door is not closed and I remain available for dialogue at all times. Impasse is not an option.”

    Valls said the Bougival document was “‘neither someone’s victory on another one, nor an imposed text: it was built day after day with partners around the table following months of long discussions.”

    In a recent letter specifically sent to Union Calédonienne, the French former Prime Minister suggested the creation of an editorial committee to start drafting future-shaping documents for New Caledonia, such as its “fundamental law”, akin to a Constitution for New Caledonia.

    Valls also stressed France’s financial assistance to New Caledonia, which last year totalled around 3 billion euros because of the costs associated to the May 2024 riots.

    The riots caused 14 dead, hundreds of injured and an estimated financial cost of more than 2 billion euros (NZ$5.8 billion) in damage.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • NZ ‘lagging behind’ world by failing to recognise Palestinian statehood, says former PM Helen Clark

    By Craig McCulloch, RNZ News acting political editor

    New Zealand is lagging behind the rest of the world through its failure to recognise Palestinian statehood, says Former Prime Minister Helen Clark.

    Canada yesterday became the latest country to announce it would formally recognise the state of Palestine when world leaders met at the UN General Assembly in September.

    It follows recent similar commitments from the France and the United Kingdom.

    On Wednesday, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon suggested the discussion was a distraction and said the immediate focus should be on getting humanitarian aid into Gaza.

    But, speaking to RNZ Midday Report, Clark said New Zealand needed to come on board.

    “We are watching a catastrophe unfold in Gaza. We’re watching starvation. We’re watching famine conditions for many. Many are using the word genocide,” she said.

    “If New Zealand can’t act in these circumstances, when can it act?”

    Elders call for recognition
    “The Elders, a group of world leaders of which Clark is a part, last month issued a call for countries to recognise the state of Palestine, calling it the “beginning, not the end of a political pathway towards lasting peace”.

    Clark said the government seemed to be trying avoid the ire of the United States by waiting until the peace process was well underway or nearing its end.

    “That is no longer tenable,” she said.

    “New Zealand really is lagging behind.”

    Even before the recent commitments from France, Canada and the UK, 147 of the UN’s 193 member states had recognised the Palestinian state.

    Clark said the hope was that the series of recognitions from major Western states would first shift the US position and then Israel’s.

    “When the US moves, Israel eventually jumps because it owes so much to the United States for the support, financial, military and otherwise,” she said.

    “At some point, Israel has to smell the coffee.”

    Surprised over Peters
    Clark said she was “a little surprised” that Foreign Minister Winston Peters had not been more forward-leaning given he historically had strongly advocated New Zealand’s even-handed position.

    On Wednesday, New Zealand signed a joint statement with 14 other countries expressing a willingness to recognise the State of Palestine as a necessary step towards a two-state solution.

    However, later speaking in Parliament, Peters said that was conditional on first seeing progress from Palestine, including representative governance, commitment to non-violence, and security guarantees for Israel.

    “If we are to recognise the state of Palestine, New Zealand wants to know that what we are recognising is a legitimate, representative, viable, political entity,” Peters told MPs.

    Peters also agreed with a contribution from ACT’s Simon Court that recognising the state of Palestine could be viewed as “a reward [to Hamas] for acts of terrorism” if it was done before Hamas had returned hostages or laid down arms.

    Luxon earlier told RNZ New Zealand had long supported the eventual recognition of Palestinian statehood, but that the immediate focus should be on getting aid into Gaza rather than “fragmenting and talking about all sorts of other things that are distractions”.

    “We need to put the pressure on Israel to get humanitarian assistance unfettered, at scale, at volume, into Gaza,” he told RNZ.

    “You can talk about a whole bunch of other things, but for right now, the world needs to focus.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • UN Youth Rights Academy 2025

    United Nations logo

    Participants of the Youth Rights Academy.

    © Credit – OHCHR

    “Knowing our rights empowers us to act. Change is not as far away as it often seems. Every one of us can drive change from where we are,” said Avril Murillo, a young digital feminist activist from Bolivia.

    “No one understands the urgency of change like young people do, especially those who’ve grown up watching their futures shrink under injustice,” added Yara Al-Zinati, a youth advocate from Gaza. “That’s why youth must stand up for their rights, to lead and shape a future where communities can thrive.”

    For Kenneth Mulinde, from Uganda, young people have a responsibility to advocate for accountability and human dignity for all.

    And for Constance Luk, a mental health advocate from Malaysia, connecting youth has the power to build a world free of discrimination and where communities support and care for each other.

    Murillo, Al-Zinati, Mulinde and Luk were among a group of 45 young human rights advocates from around the world who participated in a Youth Rights Academy in Geneva on 7-11 July.

    The Youth Rights Academy is the result of a partnership between UN Human Rights and and Qatar’s global foundation, Education Above All (EAA), aimed at empowering and mobilizing young people, particularly those living in situations of conflict and insecurity, to stand up for their human rights.

    The partnership, implemented since 2022, has previously resulted in the development of the Youth Advocacy Toolkit, which was launched in September 2023 as “YES: Youth Empowerment System”, and laid the foundation for the Youth Rights Academy.

    Since its beginning, the project has been guided by a Youth Advisory Board (YAB), a group of young human rights advocates from diverse countries and regions who offer feedback on the project’s overall direction and focus. Members of the second cohort of the YAB attended the Youth Rights Academy as participants, and also helped to design and facilitate some of its sessions.

    The Academy brought together experts, including UN bodies and mandate-holders, and civil society organizations to equip young rights advocates with the knowledge and tools to defend and promote human rights in their communities.

    The program included workshops on international human rights law and international humanitarian law, the right to education, the climate crisis, political participation, social media advocacy, and the protection of human rights defenders, among other topics.

    https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2025/07/youth-rights-academy-learning-skills-lead-change-0

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.