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Category: Human Rights

  • Queensland government accused of cowing to Christian Lobby on anti-discrimination bill

    Human rights commissioner says government has ‘recklessly abandoned’ years of consultation aimed at modernising outdated laws

    Queensland’s human rights commissioner, Scott McDougall, has said he is “deeply disappointed” and “at a loss to understand why” the state Labor government reneged on its promise to overhaul the state’s Anti-Discrimination Act.

    As foreshadowed by Guardian Australia, the attorney general, Yvette D’Ath, on Friday tabled a new bill that will enact only some of the promised reforms.

    Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

    Continue reading…

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

  • Israel is Dragging the World into Darkness

    Israel must be held accountable for the suffering it is inflicting on Gaza (Omar Ashtawy APA images)

    Israel does not belong in the modern world. It is the child of European colonialism and Europe’s genocidal anti-Semitism, imposed by force and fire and Western guilt on a land already inhabited by an indigenous people.

    Israel is a contemporary trespass of that old world’s colonial ethos that justified genocide, ethnic cleansing, wholesale plunder, endless theft and destruction of indigenous peoples in the name of settlement and divine entitlement of a superior group of humans.

    But the modern world has moved on with incremental moral evolution. It long ago repudiated, at least in principle, the racist and violent impulses that powered the genocidal colonial engines of old.

    One can hear Israel’s anachronistic nature in the rhetoric of its leaders and citizens. Benjamin Netanyahu points to America’s nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to justify Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.

    Zionists, especially those in settler-colonial nations like the United States and Australia, love to remind us that these countries were founded on the genocide and ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples.

    And from these reminders come their accusations of double standards and hypocrisy. “You’re living on stolen land, why don’t you leave?” so their rhetoric goes.

    Implicit in their accusations is an admission of sameness with the violent and racist settler-colonial force that created the United States.

    In other words, while humanity has tried and continues to strive to prevent and right the wrongs of the past, Israel points to these base moments in human history, not in the context of “never again,” but as precedents it should be free to emulate.

    As we still today uncover mass graves in “Indian schools” where Indigenous children were ripped from their families and tortured to death in boarding schools, Israel demands the right to create more mass graves of Palestinians in the name of “self-defense.”

    While we engage in discourse to push for acknowledgement and reparations, much as the world did for European Jews, Israel demands an entitlement to ethnically cleanse indigenous Palestinians, steal their lands, plunder resources and raze their cities and farmlands.

    While we imagine and endeavor to create a post-colonial reality of revolutionary universalism, inclusion, equity and understanding, Israel demands the right to Jewish exclusivity and Jewish entitlement at the expense of non-Jews.

    Invoking American settler-colonialism to justify its own version of the same is no different than invoking America’s industrialized enslavement as a precedent to emulate.

    Rules-based order?

    Western governments have long touted their values as beacons of democracy and idealism toward which modernity must aim. How they love to lecture the world about law and rules-based order; about freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of this and that.

    But look how quickly they denounce, veto and attack any courts, human rights organizations and UN protocols when the institutions they helped create do not serve their imperial interests. Look how quickly they shut down speech and sic their police on their own citizens trying to exercise those freedoms.

    They do this because Israel is antithetical to democratic values. It is antithetical to human rights and the so-called rules-based order.

    The West must therefore choose between Israel and the ideals it claims to uphold. And thus far, it is choosing Israel.

    And in the process, it is dragging itself and the world into an abyss.

    Already, Indian commentators are talking about an “Israel-like” solution in Kashmir. The world is silent as Arab dictatorships like the UAE are arming genocidal militias in Sudan to take control of the country’s vast gold and uranium treasures.

    Israel is dragging the world into an infectious darkness that will spread across our planet unless it is stopped and held accountable for the holocaust it is committing in Gaza and now, it seems, in the West Bank as well.

    The “solution” is not at all complicated, contrary to pervasive Zionist propaganda.

    It is simply an adherence to accepted universal morality that rejects Jewish supremacy as it rejects all other forms of supremacy. This means equality of rights for all those who inhabit the land, a return of Palestinian refugees in a nation of its citizens founded on the principle of one-person-one-vote.

    • Article first published in The Electronic Intifada

    The post Israel is Dragging the World into Darkness first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • ‘Betrayal’: Swiss Parliament Rejects European Court’s Landmark Climate Change Ruling

    swiss climate case
    6 Mins Read

    Lawmakers in Switzerland have voted to disregard a human rights ruling in favour of senior female climate activists, with a particularly reprehensible stance taken by the parliament’s largest party.

    In a surprising move, Swiss politicians have defied a landmark decision by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which ruled that the government had violated the right to life of elderly women through its inaction on climate change.

    The judgement, meted out in April, had followed an eight-year legal battle, which began with a lawsuit by the KlimaSeniorinnen, a group of 2,400 elderly women with an average age of 74. The organisation accused the Swiss government of not doing enough to combat climate change.

    It argued that its members were the most affected by increasingly frequent extreme heat events, citing a UN IPCC report revealing that women and older adults are among the demographics facing the highest risks of temperature-related deaths during heatwaves.

    The court in Strasbourg agreed with this argument, stating that the government had failed to comply with its duties under the European Convention concerning climate change. It directed the state to take greater action against the climate crisis by updating its policies.

    But in a remarkable move, the Swiss parliament has voted not to comply with the ruling, arguing that the ECHR had overstepped its bounds and that the government had done enough to combat global warming. The outcome has raised fears that this could set a precedent with other countries facing similar litigation, which could potentially follow suit.

    Far-right leader mocks Swiss women’s climate group

    swiss parliament climate change
    Courtesy: Jean-Christophe Bott/Keystone

    What Switzerland’s politicians have voted through is extraordinary – no member state of the Council of Europe (which the ECHR belongs to), has ever refused to implement a judgement.

    While the decision had been adopted by the upper house of the parliament, the lower house voted to disregard it. With 111 votes in favour and 72 against, the lawmakers accused the ECHR of “inadmissible and disproportionate judicial activism”.

    And although the Swiss Federal Council – a seven-member cabinet that governs the country – is free to break with the parliament’s vote and comply with the court’s judgments, the environment minister Albert Rösti has previously seemingly questioned the ruling’s impact. It must be noted that Rösti, a member of the far-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP), is a former oil lobbyist.

    The SVP is the loudest voice in the lower house of the Swiss parliament, since it has the most seats. A comment made by one of its politicians encapsulated the emotion that took over the politicians during the discussion, as well as the ill feeling towards the climate activists.

    Jean-Luc Addor, who was previously convicted for racism and inciting violence, said: “These ‘climate elder’ are just a bunch of apparently healthy ‘boomeuses’ [female boomers], who are trying to deny our children the living conditions they have enjoyed all their lives.”

    Corina Heri, a law researcher at the University of Zürich told the Guardian that this move is “terrible from a rule-of-law perspective”, stating that “the whole system would fall apart” if lots of other countries begin picking and choosing which rulings they want to comply to. “The term ‘slippery slope’ is overused, obviously, but it is a dangerous precedent to create,” she added.

    KlimaSeniorinnen co-president Rosmarie Wydler-Wälti said she was appalled by the move, calling it unworthy of a constitutional state: “The declaration is a betrayal of us older women – and of all those who are suffering from the real consequences of global warming today and in the future.”

    KilmaSeniorinnen could appeal Swiss non-compliance

    climate change human rights
    Courtesy: Miriam Kuenzli/Ex-Press

    In November, Switzerland will mark the 50th anniversary of its ratification of the European Convention on Human Rights, which legally obliges member states to implement the ECHR’s judgements.

    While countries have a tendency to drag implementation – nearly half of all leading rulings by the court in the last decade are still pending full implementation, and take over six years on average – former ECHR judge Helen Keller told Reuters that the Strasbourg court was asking less of the government than other national courts in similar cases.

    For example, a 2019 judgement by the Dutch High Court had ordered the Netherlands to accelerate its greenhouse gas emissions reduction measures by ensuring that they were at least 25% below 1990 levels by the end of 2020.

    Prior to the Swiss parliament’s discussion, the KlimaSeniorinnen and climate activism group Greenpeace had submitted a petition with 22,000 signatures that called on politicians to recognise that human rights are the foundation of democracy and should be independent of political majorities.

    The climate elder group can complain to the Council of Europe if it feels the government is non-compliant. A committee of the Council meets four times a year to monitor adherence to ECHR decisions, and a lawyer for the KilmaSeniorinnen told Reuters that it is considering appealing to this committee, and might do so even before the October deadline, given the parliament’s actions.

    The committee can refer cases back to the court in exceptional cases, having done so twice in the ECHR’s 65-year history. Expulsion from the Council is also a possibility, and countries can also leave the convention if they no longer want to comply, but experts say it’s unlikely either of those would happen. Instead, Switzerland is expected to come under pressure to accept the court’s ruling.

    A marker of Europe’s far-right trajectory

    klimaseniorinnen
    Courtesy: AP

    So what could compliance look like? The legal counsel for the group that brought the case against the Dutch government, Dennis van Berkel, said it would need a change in policy, as Switzerland’s current share of the global carbon budget is twice the size of its population.

    The country’s existing commitments outline a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030 (from 1990 levels). But its policies have been deemed “insufficient” by the Climate Action Tracker, which adjudged national action against the 1.5°C goal.

    Looking at opinion polls, it’s hard to gauge what the Swiss public makes of all this. While many are worried about the fact that the government isn’t on course to meet Paris Agreement targets, a majority of voters also reject the ECHR’s involvement. They believe Switzerland is already doing enough in terms of climate action, highlighting the contradictory attitudes towards the issue.

    The parliament’s declaration is also being viewed as a threat to other such litigations, both ongoing and in the future. Isabela Keuschnigg, a legal researcher at the London School of Economics (LSE), told Reuters that if the government refused to implement the ruling, it could “set a concerning precedent, undermining the role of legal oversight in democratic governance”.

    And if countries left the European convention, it would have “significant political and social repercussions”, according to Joana Setzer, a climate litigation expert at LSE.

    The decision puts the government in a difficult position, said Evelyne Schmid, an international law professor at the University of Lausanne. “Members of parliament and everyone else can criticise judgments they don’t like – that’s of course legitimate in a democracy, and courts exist precisely for situations in which there is disagreement,” she told the Guardian. “But a parliament officially accusing the institution of ‘undue judicial activism’ sends a different, problematic message.”

    This declaration, as well as comments made by the SVP’s Addor, reflect the shifting political landscape in Europe. The EU (which Switzerland isn’t a part of) just elected a parliament where the far-right made major gains and the Greens lost a lot of sway, and there’s real apprehension about its potential detriment to the bloc’s climate action.

    Time will tell, of course. Meanwhile, Switzerland’s glaciers continue to melt.

    The post ‘Betrayal’: Swiss Parliament Rejects European Court’s Landmark Climate Change Ruling appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Kanaky New Caledonia unrest: Fiji, PNG call for UN decolonisation mission

    BenarNews staff

    Fiji and Papua New Guinea have urged the UN’s Decolonisation Committee to expedite a visit to the French-controlled Pacific territory of Kanaky New Caledonia following its pro-independence riots last month.

    Nine people have died, dozens were injured and businesses were torched during unrest in the capital Noumea triggered by the French government’s move to dilute the voting power of New Caledonia’s indigenous Kanak people.

    Fiji’s permanent representative to the UN, Filipo Tarakinikini, whose statement was also on behalf of Papua New Guinea, spoke yesterday of the two countries’ “serious concern” at the disproportionate number of Kanaks who had lost their lives since the onset of the crisis.

    “We underscore that New Caledonia can best be described as a fork in the road situation,” Tarakinikini told the committee session at UN headquarters in New York.

    “History is replete with good lessons,” he said, “to navigate such situations toward peaceful resolution. Today we have heard yet again loud and clear what colonisation does to a people.”

    Tarakinikini said Fiji and Papua New Guinea want the UN’s Special Committee on Decolonisation to send a visiting mission to New Caledonia as soon as possible to get first-hand knowledge of the situation.

    He also criticised militarisation of the island after France sent hundreds of police and troops with armoured personnel carriers to restore order. Unrest has continued despite the security reinforcements.

    ‘Taking up arms no solution’
    “Taking up arms against each other is not the solution, nor is the militarisation and fortification by authorities in the territory the correct signal in our Blue Pacific continent,” Tarakinikini said.

    PIC 220240610 UN C24 Fiji.png
    Fiji’s permanent representative to the UN, Filipo Tarakinikini, addresses the UN Special Committee on Decolonisation (C24), in New York on on Monday. Image: UN Web TV

    New Caledonia’s international airport remains closed, preventing pro-independence President Louis Mapou and other representatives from traveling to the UN committee.

    Rioting is estimated by the local chamber of commerce to have caused US$200 million in economic damage, with 7000 jobs lost.

    The decolonisation committee was established by the UN General Assembly in 1961 to monitor implementation of the international commitment to granting independence to colonised peoples. Today, some 17 territories, home to 2 million people and mostly part of the former British empire, are under its purview.

    Fiji and Papua New Guinea are both long-term committee members, which has listed New Caledonia as a UN non-self-governing territory under French administration since 1986.

    In the Pacific, American Samoa, French Polynesia, Guam, Pitcairn and Tokelau also remain on the list.

    Representatives of civil society organisations who spoke to the committee criticised France’s control of New Caledonia and blamed it for triggering the crisis.

    Loyalists talk of ‘coup’
    Loyalists who made submissions likened the riots to a coup and a deliberate sabotage of what they said was the previous consensus between Kanaks and French immigrants, “forcing those who do not adhere to the independence project to leave.”

    France’s statement to the meeting appeared to blame outside forces for fomenting unrest.

    “Certain external actors, far from the region, seek to fuel tensions through campaigns to manipulate information,” the country’s delegate said, adding the European country would “continue its cooperation with the UN, including during this key period.”

    French National Assembly member from French Guiana Jean Victor Castor warned the country had entered a “new phase of colonial repression.”

    Castor also called on the U.N. to send a mission to “encourage France to respect its commitments and pursue the path of concerted decolonisation, the only guarantee of a return to peace.”

    000_34W47UQ.jpg
    Burned cars are seen on Plum Pass, an important road through Monte-Dore in New Caledonia on Monday. Monte-Dore is cut off from the capital Noumea by roadblocks weeks after deadly riots erupted in the Pacific island territory. Image: AFP/BenarNews

    French control of New Caledonia gives the European nation a significant security and diplomatic role in the Pacific at a time when the US, Australia and other Western countries are pushing back against China’s inroads in the region.

    New Caledonia, home to about 270,000 people, also has valuable nickel deposits that are among the world’s largest.

    Unrest worst since 1980s
    The unrest was the worst political violence in the Pacific territory since the 1980s. The riots erupted on May 12 as the lower house of France’s National Assembly debated and subsequently approved a constitutional amendment to unfreeze New Caledonia’s electoral roll, which would give the vote to thousands of French immigrants.

    Final approval of the amendment requires a joint sitting of France’s lower house and Senate.

    On Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron said such efforts should be suspended following his call earlier this week for a snap general election in France, Agence France-Presse reports.

    “I have decided to suspend it, because we can’t leave things ambiguous in this period,” Macron said, according to the international news service.

    Referendums held in 2018 and 2020 under the UN-mandated decolonisation process produced modest majorities in favor of remaining part of France.

    Less than half of New Caledonians voted in the third and final referendum in 2021 that overwhelmingly backed staying part of France.

    The vote was boycotted by the Kanak independence movement after it was brought forward without consultation by the French government during a serious phase of the covid-19 pandemic, which restricted campaigning.

    Mareva Lechat-Kitalong, Delegate for International, European and Pacific Affairs of French Polynesia, told the committee what happened with New Caledonia’s third referendum should “not happen again for a question so fundamental as independence or not.”

    She also urged France to commit to a roadmap for French Polynesia that “fully supports a proper decolonisation process and self-determination process under the scrutiny of the United Nations.”

    Copyright ©2015-2024, BenarNews. Republished with the permission of BenarNews.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Human Rights Defenders issues at the 56th session of the UN Human Rights Council

    The UN Human Rights Council will hold its 56th regular session at Palais des Nations in Geneva from 18 June and 12 July 2024. And as always the excellent Alert of the International Service for Human Rights permits me to hightlight what concerns HRDs most. To stay up-to-date you can follow @ISHRglobal and #HRC56 on X, and look out for the Human Rights Council Monitor.

    Civil Society Access and Participation The UN is facing a severe liquidity crisis due to member states not paying their membership dues in full and on time. This shortfall is impacting victims and survivors of human rights violations. The crisis risks being used to impose restrictions on civil society participation, although online and hybrid modalities offer cost-effective and environmentally friendly solutions. Over 100 human rights organisations have called on all states to promptly pay their dues to address the liquidity crisis. Additionally, this session States have the opportunity to continue to build on the good practices adopted in the past years and allow for a broader, more inclusive, effective and climate-friendly human rights system, including by providing remote access to informal consultations on HRC resolutions that can greatly benefit from the analysis and lived experiences of human rights defenders.

    Thematic issues Issues on the agenda At this 56th session, the Council will discuss a range of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights through dedicated debates with the mandate holders and the High Commissioner, including with the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, the Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of expression, the Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, the Special Rapporteur on promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change, the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance In addition, the Council will hold dedicated debates on the rights of specific groups including with: The Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, the Special Rapporteur on the rights of Internally Displaced Persons, the Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, the Special Rapporteur on independence of judges and lawyers

    The Council will also hold debates on interrelation of human rights and thematic issues including with: The High Commissioner on new and emerging technologies.

    The new incoming Independent Expert on violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, Graeme Reid, will present his first report focusing on freedom of expression, assembly and association.

    Environment and Climate Justice The Special Rapporteur on Internally Displaced Persons will present her report on planned relocations of people in the context of the adverse effects of climate change and disasters. This report is building up on previous reports by other mandates and will also look at laws and policies at the national, regional, and international levels. The newly appointed Special Rapporteur on Climate Change will also present her first report looking at the upcoming priorities and some reflections of the progress achieved on some issues in the last 5 years. The report will also provide a snapshot of some other key topics and the impacts on some particular groups. The Special Rapporteur will also present two country visits reports: Honduras and the Philippines. There is currently a call for inputs for her upcoming General Assembly report on access to information on climate change and human rights. The Working Group on Business and Human Rights will present its report on investors, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) approaches and human rights. The report will raise awareness of the responsibilities of investors and will clarify responsibilities on how to align their ESG approaches to human rights. On Thursday 20 June, the President of the Human Rights Council is organising a high-level informal Presidential discussion on ‘The important link between climate change, food security and health security’. The discussion should address the important role of environmental human right defenders in promoting and securing the full realisation of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment; and recognition of the obligation of States to prevent, protect and promote their work in an enabling environment.

    International Solidarity Civil society and international experts have continued to raise grave concern at the attacks on fundamental freedoms when advocating for the human rights of Palestinians by authorities in Western countries, including in universities. The High Commissioner deplored the ‘sharp rise in hatred globally – including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia’. In her report to the Council, the Independent Expert on International Solidarity called on States to ‘eliminate the criminalization of international solidarity expressions and symbols and calls for accountability for violations of public international law norms, such as calls for peace, self-determination or decolonization and the ending of apartheid or genocide […] stressing that States ‘should not conflate them with ‘manifest support of terrorism’ or antisemitism in relevant legislation or regulations’. The Special Rapporteur on racism also raised concern at ‘accusations of antisemitism on the basis of legitimate criticism of treatment of Palestinians by Israel’ in her report following her visit to the United States.

    The Special Rapporteur on Education, following her visit to the United States, stressed that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism is being used to crackdown against pro-Palestinian protesters, including individuals who ‘self-identify as belonging to the Jewish community or represent Jewish student associations’. The Rapporteur addressed violations against students following the organisation of ‘mass encampments at nearly 40 universities in more than 25 states across the country’, including the detention of more than 2000 individuals, raids by fully armed police on university campuses requested by educational institutions to ‘disperse demonstrators and dismantle encampments’.   During the session, and especially in the ID with the experts on International Solidarity, Education, Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Assembly and Association, we urge States to call for an end to the repression and criminalisation of groups and individuals advocating for the human rights of the Palestinian people, including through the instrumentalization of anti-Semitism (IHRA definition) and anti-terrorism policies, including in universities, and especially in the West (including in Austria, France, Germany,  Italy, United States, United Kingdom).

    Reprisals
    HRC56 is a key opportunity for States to raise concerns about specific cases of reprisals and demand that governments provide an update on any investigation or action taken toward accountability. This month ISHR launched a new campaign regarding cases. ISHR urges States to raise these cases in their statements:

    Cao Shunli was a prominent Chinese human rights defender, who sought to share information on the human rights situation in China with the United Nations in Geneva. Cao was arbitrarily detained and died in prison 10 years ago. [for more saee: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/cao-shunli/]

    Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja is a Bahraini-Danish advocate known for his unwavering commitment to freedom and democracy. In April 2011 during the Bahrain chapter of what is known as the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings, while he was leading peaceful demonstrations, Abdulhadi was violently arrested. He went missing for two months and, in June 2011, after a military trial, he was condemned to life-imprisonment on terrorism-related charges, despite grave concerns from the international community about unfair trials. [s`eae also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/11/29/mea-laureate-abdulhadi-al-khawaja-facing-new-charges-for-protesting-injustice-in-jau-prison/ and https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/4d45e316-c636-4d02-852d-7bfc2b08b78d]

    Pham Doan Trang is an author, blogger, journalist and pro-democracy activist from Viet Nam. Trang was prosecuted for her articles and reports on the human rights situation in Viet Nam, including an analysis of a 2016 report on the Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Plant environmental disaster that was shared with the United Nations. See also: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/fe8bf320-1d78-11e8-aacf-35c4dd34b7ba and https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/pham-doan-trang/].

    Khurram Parvez and Irfan Mehraj are two Kashmiri human rights defenders. They have conducted ground-breaking and extensive human rights documentation in the Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, including through their work within the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS). In 2016, Indian authorities arrested Khurram a day after he was barred from traveling to Geneva to attend the 33rd session of the Human Rights Council. See also: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/81468931-79AA-24FF-58F7-10351638AFE3 and https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/khurram-parvez/. Meanwhile, on 20 March 2023, Irfan was summoned for questioning and arbitrarily detained by the NIA in Srinagar also under provisions of the UAPA and other laws. The NIA targeted Irfan for being ‘a close associate of Khurram Parvez.’ Both Khurram and Irfan are presently in pre-trial detention in the maximum-security Rohini prison in New Delhi, India.

    Country-specific issues on the agenda

    The Council will consider updates, reports on and is expected to consider resolutions addressing a range of country situations, in some instances involving the renewal of the relevant expert mandates. These include: Interactive Dialogues with the High Commissioner and the Special Rapporteur on Myanmar Enhanced Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan Interactive Dialogue with the Independent international fact-finding mission for the Sudan Interactive Dialogue with the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Eritrea Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Belarus Interactive Dialogue with the Commission of Inquiry on Syria Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Burundi Interactive Dialogue with the High Commissioner on Venezuela Interactive Dialogue with the High Commissioner on Libya Interactive Dialogue with the Independent Expert on Central African Republic Interactive Dialogue with the High Commissioner on Ukraine and interim report of SG on Crimea Interactive Dialogue with the High Commissioner on Colombia

    Afghanistan On 18 June, Richard Bennett, Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan will present his most recent report on the ‘phenomenon of an institutionalized system of discrimination, segregation, disrespect for human dignity and exclusion of women and girls’ (HRC res. 54/1). The report provides a multidimensional understanding of the design, commission and impact of the harms resulting from the Taliban’s institutionalized system of gender-based oppression. We welcome the Special Rapporteur’s view expressed in the report that the framing of gender apartheid most fully encapsulates the institutionalized and ideological nature of the abuses in the country. We note that the report of the Working Group on Discrimination Against Women to be presented at this session also noted the pattern of large-scale systematic violations of women’s and girls’ fundamental rights in Afghanistan ‘constitutes an institutionalized framework of apartheid based on gender and merits an unequivocal response.’ ISHR considers that the pursuit of justice for Afghan women and girls demands a multifaceted approach harnessing the strengths of various accountability mechanisms, including the establishment of an accountability mechanism for crimes against humanity; with strategic coordination exerting heightened pressure on the Taliban.

    Sudan On 18 June, the Fact-Finding Mission on Sudan will provide its first oral update to the HRC. Since the conflict erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on 15 April 2023, more than 30 thousand people have been killed while 10 million and a half have been displaced, a majority of which are women and children. Half of the population is now on the verge of famine, and 2.5 million could die of starvation by September. The continued fighting in El Fashir portends a repeated massacre and ethnic cleansing of the Masalit in El Geneina last year. In Aljazeera at least one hundred people were killed by RSF on 5 June, the area is facing grave human rights violations since last December.  Meanwhile, the attacks on women’s rights groups and local response initiatives continue unabated.bHumanitarian responders get arbitrarily arrested, and smeared as traitors by the warring parties, some sentenced for up to 2 years and even killed. States should call for an immediate ceasefire, protection of civilians and adherence to international law by all parties in the conflict. 

    Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel On 19 June, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel will present its report addressing the 7 October attacks by Palestinian armed groups and the commencement of Israel’s war on Gaza.

    Venezuela The High Commissioner will present his report on 3 July with his Office staff still operating from Panama. The Maduro government has still not permitted the return of the Office on the terms of its original mandate. With Presidential elections to be held on 28 July, concerns increase about the safety of human rights defenders and opposition figures. Uncertainty has recently been increased by the re-introduction (and then rapid postponement of adoption) of the NGO Law. HRDs Javier Tarazona and Rocío San Miguel remain wholly unjustifiably detained. States must engage actively in the dialogue with the High Commissioner to make clear their support of the essential work of human rights defenders and of the UN’s essential, multifaceted regime scrutinising the human rights situation in the country. Situations of concern that are not on the Council’s agenda

    Algeria The sustained repression against the pro-democracy movement and human rights defenders in Algeria was addressed in the end-of-session statements of the Special Rapporteur on freedom of association and assembly as well as the Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders who conducted official visits to Algeria in 2023. These were the first visits since 2016 by UN mandate holders to the country. The Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Assembly and Association addressed the ‘criminalisation of civil society work‘, and the ‘suspension or dissolution of political parties and associations, including prominent human rights advocacy organisations’ (including RAJ and LADDH), as well as ‘overly restrictive laws and regulations’ hindering their work.


    Bahrain Thirty-three civil society organisations reiterated that thirteen years since Bahrain’s popular uprising, systemic injustice has intensified and political repression targeting dissidents, human rights defenders, clerics and independent civil society has effectively shut any space for the peaceful exercise of the right to freedom of expression or peaceful activism in the country. Despite the recent royal pardon issued on 8 April 2024, which included the release of more than 650 political prisoners, marking a change in State policy from previous royal pardons, the pardon excluded many individuals who played significant roles in the 2011 pro-democracy uprising, with an estimated 550 political prisoners remaining behind bars. HRC56 provides an important opportunity to address these developments in States’ national and joint statements, including during the Interactive Dialogues with the Special Rapporteurs and Independent Expert on Health, Freedom of Expression, Peaceful Assembly and Association, Independence of Judges and Lawyers and International Solidarity. We urge States to call for the release of all those arbitrarily, including human rights defenders and opposition activists Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, Abduljalil Al-Singace, Hassan Mushaima and Sheikh Ali Salman as well as death row inmates Mohammed Ramadhan and Husain Moosa, who have now spent over a decade unlawfully detained following torture and unfair trials and remain at immanent risk of execution.

    China The adoption on 4 July of the outcome of China’s fourth UPR review, which exposed strong international condemnation over grave abuses in January, is a key opportunity for States to urge China to fully implement recommendations emanating from existing findings by UN bodies. Any rejection by the Chinese government of UPR recommendations referring to UN expert mechanisms or to constructive cooperation with the UN system should be promptly condemned. Ahead of the second anniversary of the publication of the damning OHCHR Xinjiang report, and its authoritative findings of possible crimes against humanity in the Uyghur region, States should request updates on the implementation of the report’s recommendations. To uphold the integrity of its mandate and put an end to China’s exceptionalism, the HRC must also establish a monitoring and reporting mechanism on the country, as repeatedly called for by over 40 UN experts and hundreds of human rights groups globally. States should further urge the UN High Commissioner to strengthen follow-up action on his Office’s Xinjiang report, including through public calls for implementation, through translation of the report, and through an assessment of its implementation. States should raise serious concerns at the repression of peaceful protests by over 100 Tibetans who opposed a hydropower project in Derge County, affecting villages and monasteries. States should unequivocally call out the adoption of yet-another national security law further criminalising dissent and human rights promotion in Hong Kong, considered a ‘regressive step’ by High Commissioner Türk. States should echo the latter’s call to ‘release immediately and unconditionally all those arbitrarily arrested and detained under these laws.’ States should further ask for the prompt release of human rights defenders arbitrarily detained or disappeared, including feminist activist Huang Xueqin, human rights lawyers Ding Jiaxi, Yu Wensheng and his wife Xu Yan, legal scholar Xu Zhiyong, Uyghur doctor Gulshan Abbas, Hong Kong lawyer Chow Hang-tung, and Tibetan climate activist A-nya Sengdra.

    Occupied Western Sahara ISHR is concerned over the situation of Saharawi human rights defenders, including lawyer M`hamed Hali, who has been arbitrarily deprived of his right to practice in the Moroccan judicial system due to opinions expressed in support of the right to self-determination for the people of Western Sahara. His hearing is scheduled on 27 June in front of Morocco´s highest court. We urge States to address  the crackdown on Sahrawi civil society including: during the Interactive Dialogues with the Special Rapporteurs on Freedom of Expression, Peaceful Assembly and Association, to call on Morocco to immediately put an end to ‘the systematic and relentless targeting of human rights defenders in retaliation for exercising their rights to freedom of association and expression to promote human rights in Western Sahara’; during the Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers to call on Morocco to reinstate M’hamed Hali’s right to practice as a lawyer, stressing that this case sets a dangerous precedent for the independence of lawyers; and during the Interactive Dialogue with the Independent Expert on International Solidarity  to reiterate the recommendation of the expert that ‘States should eliminate the criminalization of international solidarity expressions and symbols and calls for accountability for violations of public international law norms, such as calls for peace, self-determination or decolonization […]’ in the case of Western Sahara.  

    Saudi Arabia On 4 July, the Council will consider Saudi Arabia’s fourth UPR outcome, as the authorities announce whether they have accepted or rejected recommendations issued by States in January. The recommendations address widespread and systematic rights violations in the Kingdom, and have the potential to bring about significant change. They include, but are not limited to: calls for the release of prisoners of conscience, many of whom are serving decades-long prison sentences for peacefully exercising their basic rights, and the repealing of travel bans imposed on human rights defenders following their release; the abolition of the death penalty for child defendants, with several young men at imminent risk of execution for alleged crimes committed as minors; and a raft of legislative measures, including ratifying key international human rights treaties and revising repressive laws. States should use this key opportunity to urge Saudi Arabia to accept them in good faith, and crucially implement them.

    Tunisia In May 2024, Tunisian authorities waged an unprecedented crackdown against Black migrants and refugees, and civil society organisations defending their rights. On 6 May, in the opening address to a National Security Council meeting, Tunisian President Kais Saied reiterated discriminatory and hateful remarks against Sub-Saharan migrants and refugees while inciting against civil society organisations, describing them as ‘traitors and [foreign] agents’ and ‘rabid trumpets driven by foreign wages’, because of their receipt of foreign funding and their ‘insulting’ of the state. The president questioned the sheltering of asylum seekers and refugees by the Tunisian Council for Refugees (CTR) – a nongovernmental organization, partner of the UNHCR, which supports the registration of asylum claims – and described asylum seekers and refugees residing in Tunisia as illegal. President Saied suggested that CSOs should only work with the state and under its instructions. Since 3 May, Tunisian authorities have arrested and opened investigations against the heads or members of at least six organisations working on migrant and refugee rights and against racial discrimination, including the CTR. Five people, including WHRD Saadia Mosbah, President of Mnemty, have remained in pre-trial detention, under unfounded accusations of financial crimes. On 14 May, the Prime Minister announced that a new association law is being finalized, which would replace Decree-Law 88, an internationally lauded legislation that that safeguards Tunisia’s right to the freedom of association. During the interactive dialogues with the Special Rapporteurs on Freedom of Assembly and Association, and Freedom of Expression, we urge States to call on Tunisia to put an end to the crackdown on civil society, immediately release all those arbitrarily detained, including individuals providing support or advocating for the rights of migrants and refugees, and to firmly condemn the escalating smear campaign and stigmatisation of human rights and humanitarian organisations receiving foreign funding and working with migrants and refugees, supported by the president’s speeches, often making use of discriminatory and racist language against Black migrants and Black people.

    Adoption of Universal Periodic Review (UPR) reports During this session, the Council will adopt the UPR working group reports on Belize, Central African Republic, Chad, China, Congo, Jordan, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Mexico, Monaco, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Senegal. ISHR supports human rights defenders in their interaction with the UPR. This session of the Council will provide an opportunity for Chad, China, Congo, Mauritius, Nigeria to accept recommendations made in relation to human rights defenders, as proposed in ISHR’s briefing papers.

    Side events

    19 June at 13:00 (room XXV): ISHR will hold a side event to launch the Declaration +25: A supplement to the UN Declaration on human rights defenders. See https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2024/06/08/launch-of-the-hrd-declaration25/.

    Open Society Institute will hold a side event on human rights in Afghanistan 19 June at 15:00:

    American Civil Liberties Union will hold a side event on human rights in the United States of America

    On 25 June at 16:00: Center for Justice and International Law will hold a side event on human rights in Guatemala

    26 June at 14:00: Amnesty International will hold a side event on the protection of freedom of expression and assembly

    On 27 June at 14:00: International Bar Association will hold a side event on gender apartheid: Case studies

    On 3 July at 12:00: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung will hold a side event on climate change and human mobility

    On 3 July at 17:00: Third World Network will hold a side event on business accountability in the context of armed conflict

    On 4 July at 15:00: Earthjustice will hold a side event on Protection of Environmental Human Rights Defenders #HRC55:

    Alert to the Human Rights Council’s 56th session

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

  • Azerbaijan accused of media crackdown before hosting Cop29

    State reportedly arrested at least 25 journalists and activists in last year as it prepares for September climate summit

    Azerbaijan’s government has been accused of cracking down on media and civil society activism before the country’s hosting of crucial UN climate talks later this year.

    Human Rights Watch has found at least 25 instances of the arrest or sentencing of journalists and activists in the past year, almost all of whom remain in custody.

    Continue reading…

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

  • Nick Rockel: RIMPAC 2024 training – NZ’s sabre dance with Israel ͏

    COMMENTARY: By Nick Rockel in Tāmaki Makaurau

    This morning I did something I seldom do, I looked at the Twitter newsfeed.

    Normally I take the approach of something that I’m not sure is an American urban legend, or genuinely something kids do over there. The infamous bag of dog poo on the front porch, set it on fire then ring the doorbell so the occupier will answer and seeing the flaming bag stamp it out.

    In doing so they obviously disrupt the contents of the bag, quite forcefully, distributing it’s contents to the surprise, and annoyance, of said stamper.

    So that’s normally what I do. Deposit a tweet on that platform, then duck for cover. In the scenario above the kid doesn’t hang around afterwards to see what the resident made of their prank.

    I’m the same with Twitter. Get in, do what you’ve got to do, then get the heck out of there and enjoy the carnage from a distance.

    But this morning I clicked on the Home button and the first tweet that came up in my feed was about an article in The Daily Blog:

    Surely not?

    I know our government hasn’t exactly been outspoken in condemning the massacre of Palestinians that has been taking place since last October — but we’re not going to take part in training exercises with them, are we? Surely not.

    A massacre — not a rescue
    A couple of days ago I was thinking about the situation in Gaza, and the recent so-called rescue of hostages that is being celebrated.

    Look, I get it that every life is precious, that to the families of those hostages all that matters is getting them back alive. But four hostages freed and 274 Palestinians killed in the process — that isn’t a rescue — that’s a massacre.

    Another one.

    It reminds me of the “rescues” of the 1970s where they got the bad guys, but all the good guys ended up dead as well. According to some sources, and there are no really reliable sources here, the rescue also resulted in the deaths of three hostages.

    While looking at reports on this training exercise, one statistic jumped out at me:

    Israel has dropped more bombs on Gaza in eight months than were dropped on London, Hamburg and Dresden during the full six years of the Second World War. Israel is dropping these bombs on one of the most densely populated communities in the world.

    It’s beyond comprehension. Think of how the Blitz in London is seared into our consciousness as being a terrible time — and how much worse this is.

    Firestorm of destruction
    As for Dresden, what a beautiful city. I remember when Fi and I were there back in 2001, arriving at the train station, walking along the river. Such a fabulous funky place. Going to museums — there was an incredible exhibition on Papua New Guinea when we were there, it seemed so incongruous to be on the other side of the world looking at exhibits of a Pacific people.

    Most of all though I remember the rebuilt cathedral and the historical information about the bombing of that city at the end of the war. A firestorm of utter destruction. Painstakingly rebuilt, over decades, to its former beauty. Although you can still see the scars.

    The ruins of Dresden following the Allied bombing in February 1945
    The ruins of Dresden following the Allied bombing in February 1945 . . . about 25,000 people were killed. Image: www.military-history.org

    Nobody will be rebuilding Gaza into a beautiful place when this is done.

    The best case for the Palestinians at this point would be some sort of peacekeeping force on the ground and then decades of rebuilding. Everything. Schools, hospitals, their entire infrastructure has been destroyed — in scenes that we associate with the most destructive war in human history.

    And we’re going to take part in training exercises with the people who are causing all of that destruction, who are massacring tens of thousands of civilians as if their lives don’t matter. Surely not.

    NZ ‘honour and mana stained’
    From Martyn Bradbury’s article in The Daily Blog:

    It is outrageous in the extreme that the NZ Defence Force will train with the Israeli Defence Force on June 26th as part of the US-led (RIMPAC) naval drills!

    Our military’s honour and mana is stained by rubbing shoulders with an Army that is currently accused of genocide and conducting a real time ethnic cleansing war crime.

    It’s like playing paintball with the Russian Army while they are invading the Ukraine.

    RIMPAC, the world’s largest international maritime warfare exercise, is held in Hawai’i every second year. The name indicates a focus on the Pacific Rim, although many countries attend.

    In 2024 there will be ships and personnel attending from 29 countries. The usual suspects you’d expect in the region — like the US, the Aussies, Canada, and some of our Pacific neighbours. But also countries from further abroad like France and Germany. As well of course as the Royal NZ Navy and the Israeli Navy.

    Which is pretty weird. I know Israel have to pretend they’re in Europe for things like sporting competitions or Eurovision, with their neighbours unwilling to include them. But what on earth does Israel have to do with the Pacific Rim?

    Needless to say those who oppose events in Gaza are not overly excited about us working together with the military force that’s doing almost all of the killing.

    “We are calling on our government to withdraw from the exercise because of Israel’s ongoing industrial-scale slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza”, said Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) national chair, John Minto.

    “Why would we want to join with a lawless, rogue state which has demonstrated the complete suite of war crimes over the past eight months?”

    Whatever you might think of John Minto, he has a point.

    Trade and travel embargo
    Personally I think we, and others, should be undertaking a complete trade and travel embargo with Israel until the killing stops. The least we can do is not rub shoulders with them as allies. That’s pretty repugnant. I can’t imagine many young Kiwis signed up to serve their country like that.

    The PSNA press release said, “Taking part in a military event alongside Israel will leave an indelible stain on this country. It will be a powerful symbol of New Zealand complicity with Israeli war crimes. It’s not on!”

    Aotearoa is not the only country in which such participation is being questioned. In Malaysia, for example, a group of NGOs are urging the government there to withdraw:

    “On May 24, the ICJ explicitly called for a halt in Israel’s Rafah onslaught. The Israeli government and opposition leaders, in line with the behaviour of a rogue lawless state, have scornfully dismissed the ICJ ruling,” it said.

    “The world should stop treating it like a normal, law-abiding state if it wants Israeli criminality in Gaza and the West Bank to stop.

    “We reiterate our call on the Malaysian government to immediately withdraw from Rimpac 2024 to drive home that message,” it said.

    What do you think about our country taking part in this event, alongside Israel Military Forces, at this time?

    Complicit as allies
    To me it feels that in doing so we are in a small way complicit. By coming together as allies, in our region of the world, we’re condoning their actions with our own.

    Valerie Morse of Peace Action Wellington had the following to say about New Zealand’s involvement in the military exercises:

    “The depth and breadth of suffering in Palestine is beyond imagination. The brutality of the Israeli military knows no boundaries. This is who [Prime Minister] Christopher Luxon and Defence Minister Judith Collins have signed the NZ military up to train alongside.

    “New Zealand must immediately halt its participation in RIMPAC. The HMNZS Aotearoa must be re-routed back home to Taranaki.

    “This is not the first time that Israel has been a participant in RIMPAC so it would not have been a surprise to the NZ government. It would have been quite easy to take the decision to stay out of RIMPAC given what is happening in Palestine. That Luxon and Collins have not done so shows that they lack even a basic moral compass.”

    The world desperately needs strong moral leadership at this time, it needs countries to take a stand against Israel and speak up for what is right.

    There’s only so much that a small country like ours can do, but we can hold our heads high and refuse to have anything to do with Israel until they stop the killing.

    Is that so hard Mr Luxon?

    Nick Rockel is a “Westie Leftie with five children, two dogs, and a wonderful wife”. He is the publisher of Nick’s Kōrero where this article was first published. It is republished here with permission. Read on to subscribe to Nick’s substack articles.


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Palestinian activist Bassem Tamimi released after Israel’s seven month colonial detention

    Israel has released Bassem Tamimi from more than seven months in detention, where he was held without charge or trial.

    Tamimi advocates for nonviolent opposition to Israel’s colonialism. Israeli forces nonetheless arbitrarily arrest him, having previously held him for around three years.

    In 1993, Israel’s internal security service Shin Bet tortured him so badly that he suffered a hemorrhage. This left him unconscious for a week.

    In 2012, Amnesty International referred to him a ‘prisoner of conscious’ and called out Israel for manufacturing incitement allegations against him through placing a 14 year old boy from his village under duress.

    Tamimi organises protests against the Israeli occupation of Palestine’s West Bank through the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee (PSCC). The PSCC resistance also takes the form of strikes, legal action, and supporting the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel’s colonial expansionism.

    From 2009 to May 2024, Israel and its settlers illegally demolished 10,740 Palestinian structures and displaced 16,284 people in the West Bank.

    One of thousands of Palestinian people Israel holds without charge or trial

    Since 7 October, Israel has arrested more than 7,350 Palestinian people in the occupied West Bank, a sharp increase on beforehand. Of these, it holds about 3,050 people in so-called ‘administrative detention’, a form of arbitrary detention without charge or trial.

    Israel-Palestine director at Human Rights Watch Omar Shakir has said:

    Israel’s sweeping use of administrative detention is not lawful

    But these practices don’t just date back years, but decades and they have only escalated since October 7

    Israeli forces are also regularly beating Palestinian detainees. After his detention, Palestinian Hashim Matar said:

    Lots of people had their [sternum] or heads broken, often gushing with blood. We weren’t even treated like animals. At least animals are treated with some sort of dignity

    On top of the figures from the West Bank, the Israeli army has also detained and tortured thousands of Palestinian people in makeshift prisons in Gaza since 7 October.

    Israel’s use of administrative detention against occupied Palestinian people is a feature of its apartheid system. That’s another of the state’s longstanding crimes, alongside the ongoing colonial expansion and genocide. While we welcome the release of Tamimi, these crimes must all come to an end.

    Featured image via +972 Magazine – YouTube

    By James Wright

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • The Guardian view on the rule of law in Hong Kong: the verdict of foreign judges is damning | Editorial

    The conviction of peaceful pro-democracy activists is another shameful moment in the ongoing crackdown

    Seven years ago, Lord Neuberger, a judge of the Hong Kong court of final appeal – and formerly president of the UK’s supreme court – described the Chinese region’s foreign judges as “canaries in the mine”. Their willingness to serve was a sign that judicial independence remained healthy, “but if they start to leave in droves, that would represent a serious alarm call”.

    That was before the extraordinary uprising in 2019 to defend Hong Kong’s autonomy, and the crackdown that followed. The draconian national security law of 2020 prompted the resignation of an Australian judge, and two British judges quit in 2022. Last week, two more birds flew: Lord Sumption and Lord Collins of Mapesbury. Lord Sumption (with other judges) had said that continued participation was in the interests of the people of Hong Kong. Now he says that those hopes of sustaining the rule of law are “no longer realistic” and that “a [once] vibrant and politically diverse community is slowly becoming a totalitarian state”. He cited illiberal legislation, Beijing’s ability to reverse decisions by Hong Kong courts and an oppressive political environment where judges are urged to demonstrate “patriotism”.

    Continue reading…

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

  • US banana giant ordered to pay $38m to families of Colombian men killed by death squads

    Landmark verdict against Chiquita marks first time major US company held liable for funding human rights abuses abroad

    A Florida court has ordered Chiquita Brands International to pay $38m to the families of eight Colombian men murdered by a paramilitary death squad, after the American banana giant was shown to have financed the terrorist organisation from 1997-2004.

    The landmark ruling late on Monday came after 17 years of legal efforts and is the first time that the fruit multinational has paid out compensation to Colombian victims, opening the way for thousands of others to seek restitution.

    Continue reading…

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

  • UK politics: Anas Sarwar says election is about ‘getting rid of Tories’, not Scottish independence – as it happened

    Leaders of Scotland’s five main political parties clash during live TV debate

    Momentum, the leftwing Labour group set up when Jeremy Corbyn was leader, is not happy about Keir Starmer’s jibe about Corbyn’s manifesto.

    Labour’s 2019 manifesto was fully costed.

    Keir should know, he stood on it as a member of the shadow cabinet.

    How about stopping attacking your own side during an election @Keir_Starmer?

    Continue reading…

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

  • UK system for wrongful conviction payouts is lawful, European court rules

    Most miscarriage of justice victims will still be denied compensation after two men lose test case in Strasbourg

    Most victims of miscarriages of justice will still be denied compensation in Britain after the European court of human rights ruled the government’s test for payouts was lawful.

    A test case was brought by Sam Hallam and Victor Nealon, two men who between them served 24 years in prison for crimes they were later exonerated of. Neither was paid any compensation by the government despite new evidence being enough to overturn their convictions.

    Continue reading…

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

  • US jury finds banana giant Chiquita guilty of financing paramilitary death squads in Colombia

    In a historic first, an American jury has held a major US corporation liable for complicity in serious human rights abuses abroad. Specifically, the case has held banana giant Chiquita Brands International accountable for financing a brutal paramilitary death squad in Colombia.

    Chiquita in Colombia

    Between 1997 and 2004, Chiquita financed the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) to the tune of US $1.7m. The AUC was a coalition of right-wing death squads. The group of over 30,000 soldiers operated throughout two-thirds of the country, and manufactured war to prop up a series of illegal business activities. Primarily, the AUC ran what was then the largest drug trafficking cartel in the world. It also engaged in arms sales, human trafficking, and money laundering.

    To seize territorial control over drug crops, the AUC carried out widespread massacres, displacement, and targeted assassinations.

    As a result, Chiquita’s financing contributed to untold suffering and loss in the Colombian regions of Urabá and Magdalena, including the brutal murders of innocent civilians.

    In 2007 the US Department of Justice held an inquiry into its illicit activities funding the US-designated terrorist group. At the time, the banana giant pleaded guilty to charges before a US district court. While the court issued a US $25m fine, Chiquita did not compensate the families of loved ones that the AUC had murdered.

    Given this, families of AUC victims, with nonprofit legal group EarthRights International, filed a case against Chiquita. Now, 17 years on some have finally obtained justice. On the 10 June, a US jury in Florida ruled in favour of the families of nine victims of the AUC.

    On the successful court ruling, the family plaintiffs said that:

    It’s a triumph of a process that has been going on for almost 17 years, for all of us who have suffered so much during these years. There’s a debate about justice and reparation; we’ve been fighting since 2007. We’re not in this process because we want to be; it was Chiquita, with its actions, that dragged us into it. We have a responsibility to our families, and we must fight for them

    Chiquita’s bloody history in bananas

    While it is a momentous victory for these families, the case also lays bare the uphill battle for human rights against imperial capitalism.

    For one, not only did this fight take 17 years, but hundreds more families are still awaiting justice. Predictably, over the course of the litigation, it has sought to evade accountability.

    What’s more, the case illustrates how corporations change their faces, but not their violent, colonial core.

    Specifically, Chiquita is the rebrand of United Fruit Company (UFVo). Notoriously, this is the corporation that conspired with then US president Eisenhower and the CIA to instigate a violent coup in Guatemala.

    Notably, in 1952, democratically elected Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz passed a decree to claw back land from large land owners. In particular, he planned to divide this up between Guatemala’s landless citizens. Naturally, this would eat into many acres of UFCo’s landholdings – and as a result, its major profits.

    However, US secretary of state John Foster Dulles and CIA director Allen Dulles organised an armed overthrow of Arbenz’s government. The US installed Guatemalan colonel Carlos Castillo as its new president. Unsurprisingly, the Dulles brothers had vested interests in UFCo, as former partners to the company’s main law firm. Following this, as Juan Gonzalez described in ‘Harvest of Empire’:

    Despite the violent and illegal manner by which Castillo’s government came to power, Washington promptly recognized it and showered it with foreign aid. Castillo lost no time in repaying his sponsors. He quickly outlawed more than five hundred trade unions and returned more than 1.5 million acres to United Fruit and the country’s other big landowners. Guatemala’s brief experiment with democracy was over. For the next four decades, its people suffered from government terror without equal in the modern history of Latin America.

    In other words, this is the colonial history in which Chiquita has its roots.

    A “powerful message”

    Responding to the ruling, EarthRights International general counsel Marco Simons said:

    This verdict sends a powerful message to corporations everywhere: profiting from human rights abuses will not go unpunished. These families, victimized by armed groups and corporations, asserted their power and prevailed in the judicial process

    From the US political elite’s 1954 coup in Guatemala, to a US jury’s damning ruling in 2024, the case is a small step forward for human rights. However, it also shows that 70 years on, it’s the same corporate colonial actors at work tyrannising communities in the Global South for financial gain.

    Feature image via UggBoy UggGirl/Wikimedia, resized to 1200 by 900, licensed under CC BY 2.0

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Pacific churches call at UN for France to drop ‘limbo law’ to restore peace in Kanaky

    Asia Pacific Report

    The Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) has called on France to drop the “limbo” proposed law on electoral changes in Kanaky New Caledonia opposed by the indigenous pro-independence movement and restore the path to peace and self-determination.

    General secretary Reverend James Bhagwan made the call at the UN Committee of 24 meeting in New York as the future of the draft law, which has already been passed decisively by the Senate and National Assembly but not ratified by the combined Council, looked doubtful as a result of French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to call a snap election.

    Incomplete legislation is reportedly deemed as suspended once a general election is called.

    Reverend Bhagwan referred to his role as a petitioner at C24 in June 2022 when he spoke on behalf of Pacific faith and civil society organisations against the moive by the French givernment to “fast track” legislative changes that would dilute the vote of the indigenous Kanaks, already a minority 41 percent of the 270,000 New Caledonian population.

    Criticising France for having turned a “deaf ear” to the “untiring and peaceful calls of the indigenous people for a new political process following the 1998 Nouméa Accord, Reverend Bhagwan said Paris had not upheld “one of the most fundamental principles of the United Nations Charter — the fundamental right of all peoples to be free, free from colonial rule”.

    in his group statement on the “Question of New Caledonia” to the “Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence of Colonial Countries and Peoples” at the UN, he said:

    The chair, members of this august committee, petitioners and observers.

    Greetings from the Pasifika Household of God. May the grace and peace of God be upon you all.

    In June, 2022, I was here as a petitioner on behalf of faith and civil society organisations of our Pacific region, home to the French colonised territories of Kanaky New Caledonia and Mā’ohi Nui French Polynesia, to raise our concerns on the failure of the referendum process.

    In Kanaky, under the Nouméa Accord, through the actions of the French government to fast track the third referendum, despite local, regional and global pleas.

    In the two years since, France has taken further actions that contradict its responsibilities as an administrating power, to uphold one of the most fundamental principles of the United Nations Charter — the fundamental right of all peoples to be free, free from colonial rule.

    France has turned a deaf ear to untiring and peaceful calls of the indigenous people of Kanaky-New Caledonia and other pro-independence supporters for a new political process, founded on justice, peaceful dialogue and consensus and has demonstrated a continued inability and unwillingness to remain a neutral and trustworthy party under the Nouméa Accord.

    Today, on behalf of Pacific Churches and Civil Society we reiterate our collective concerns that we have made in a number of statements on the current situation in Kanaky.

    Recalling these statements and on behalf of the Église Protestante de Kanaky Nouvelle-Calédonie, and the Pacific Regional Non-Governmental Organisation Alliance, the Pacific Conference of Churches calls:

    1. For the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the draft constitutional law seeking to unfreeze the local electorate roll. Noting that the Presidents of four other French overseas territories have called for the withdrawal of the voting changes;
    2. On the French Government to reconsider, as an essential step to de-escalating tensions in the territory, any further deployment of armed forces to Kanaky;
    3. On the French Presidency to cease any further attempts to enforce externally designed and controlled pathways to determine the political future of Kanaky, including a possible referendum in France to unfreeze the territory’s electorate roll;
    4. On other parties to the Noumea Accord to heed the repeated and non-violent requests of the FLNKS and other pro-independence voices, over the last 2-3 years, to allow more conducive conditions for dialogue and negotiation for a better political agreement, and to give the process all the time necessary to do so;
    5. For the Pacific Islands Forum to establish an Eminent Persons Group, comprising of French, Pacific Islands and international personalities, in collaboration with the C24, as a matter of urgency to mediate between the parties and ensure the best conditions to enable a just and peaceful dialogue process for the territory’s political future; and finally,
    6. Beyond the political dialogue process, commitments to be made and kept for culturally appropriate community trauma healing for all communities in Kanaky and for community dialogue processes, particularly between Kanak and Caldoche for peacebuilding as well as nation building.

    The very fact that Kanaky New Caledonia is an agenda item in this meeting and that of the 24th Committee is a reminder that their decolonisation is a matter of ‘WHEN’, not ‘if’ — and a ‘when’ that needs to be sooner rather than later.

    May God’s blessings of justice, love and liberation be with all the people of Kanaky as they seek their own equality, liberty and fraternity.

    Oleti Atrqatr (Thank you in the Kanak Drehu dialect).

    Presented by
    Reverend James Shri Bhagwan
    General Secretary
    Pacific Conference of Churches

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Palestinian American Political Analyst Calls Nuseirat Raid a “Massacre”

    Israel’s weekend attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp that freed four Israeli hostages and killed at least 274 Palestinians and wounded nearly 700 was reportedly supported by the Biden administration, which provided intelligence to Israel ahead of the raid. “There’s no question that what unfolded in that operation was a massacre,” says Palestinian American political analyst Omar Baddar.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Was the World’s Largest Election Decided By the Climate Crisis?

    india elections climate change
    6 Mins Read

    India’s dramatic election results have confirmed a third term for Narendra Modi, but with a much-weakened mandate – is climate change to blame (or thank) for that?

    India stands third in the world for the number of billionaires and the amount of greenhouse gas emissions, and that perhaps sums up the paradoxical nature of the nation’s latest election.

    As Narendra Modi was sworn in for a third term as prime minister, he did so much later and in much different circumstances than his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), expected. Before the election – where 642 million Indians, or 8% of the world’s population, voted – the narrative was one of a third-consecutive landslide victory for the right-wing party.

    With a mandate built on Hindu nationalism, the slogan ‘Ab ki baar, 400 paar’ (This time, past 400) – a redux of the 2015 campaign slogan ‘Ab ki baar, Modi sarkar’ (This time, a Modi government) – was all over the BJP’s communications, referring to a parliamentary supermajority that would allow the party to amend the constitution.

    Things, however, didn’t pan out the way Modi wanted. The BJP didn’t even obtain the simple majority of 272, let alone 400, instead having to rely on alliances to form a coalition government with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). It was a victory that felt like defeat, and vice-versa for the now-strong opposition INDIA coalition, led by Congress member and political dynast Rahul Gandhi.

    The shock result of the world’s largest election was a rejection of the BJP’s religious persecution, and was ascribed – by Gandhi no less – to India’s poorest. In the last decade, the country has become the fifth-largest economy in the world, but the wealth gap has never been more stark.

    The disparity can also be found when you look at who feels the worst effects of climate change. While Modi may have built an us-versus-them mentality using the historical emissions of the “hypocritical West”, the climate crisis was notably absent from his entire electoral campaign, despite India being amongst the 40 nations most vulnerable to global warming.

    Climate change drove farmers away from the BJP

    india elections heat
    Courtesy: Reuters

    The sheer size of India’s elections makes for complex logistics – this year, the entire exercise ran six weeks. And while the length of the election isn’t anything new, it was a much larger focus because of the extreme heatwaves sweeping through the nation.

    In the northern states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha, at least 33 people – including election officials on duty – died of suspected heatstroke in a single day in May. This followed reports that parts of New Delhi almost breached the 53°C barrier, the highest-ever temperature recorded in India, prompting the High Court to warn that the capital could soon turn into “a barren desert”.

    But despite the Election Commission setting up a task force to monitor weather conditions (only after voting was underway) and sending a heat precaution list to poll workers, party campaigners were told not to do anything differently in the face of the heat.

    This encapsulates the attitude towards the climate crisis by India’s lawmakers. While people suffer fatally from extreme weather, the BJP promised more temples and a better economy. But at what – and whose – cost? Unemployment and cost of living have been pinpointed as two key reasons that voters turned sour on the incumbent government.

    In his second term, Modi faced one of the most powerful backlashes of his political career. While India and the world went in and out of lockdowns, hundreds of thousands of farmers poured into New Delhi to protest against his moves to open up more private investment in agriculture. The farmers believed this would make them vulnerable to low prices.

    Agriculture is the biggest source of income in India, with 70% of rural households dependent on farming, and 82% being small or marginal farmers. But as climate change worsens, so does its impact on the sector. Extreme heat and droughts are decimating crops, while groundwater is already in short supply. Farmers are facing crippling debt – since Modi first took office in 2014, estimates suggest 100,000 farmers have taken their lives.

    These are all climate issues. Ignoring them has swayed many former BJP voters, who are rightfully dismayed by the lack of jobs outside agriculture for India’s youth, many of whom grow up in farming families riddled with debt for their entire lives.

    farmers protest india
    Courtesy: Pradeep Gaurs/Shutterstock

    India’s inadequate climate goals need a revamp

    Modi’s first speech after it became apparent that his coalition would gain the majority represented some marked shifts from his previous rhetoric. ‘Jai Shree Ram’ became ‘Jai Jagannath’ (after Ayodhya voted out the BJP despite the building of a divisive temple on the site of a destroyed mosque), the Modi government was now the NDA government, and climate change was suddenly an issue.

    The prime minister took note of the election workers who toiled away in the sweltering heat for weeks, and, while there was no mention of the failure of reaching the 400-seat target, read between the lines and you could sense relief, and worry.

    India’s emissions are off the charts, thanks in part to its agricultural practices, and in even larger part to its fossil fuel industry. Coal, specifically, is the biggest source of electricity across the country, and its use actually grew this year. And, despite being the third-largest solar power generator in the world, the overall share of clean energy has subsequently decreased, making up just around 22% of the total.

    At COP26, Modi set out a pledge to reach net zero by 2070, but more than half of India’s electricity will still be sourced from coal by the end of the decade. And its climate target (or nationally determined contribution) has been deemed “highly insufficient” by the Climate Action Tracker, with current policies and action rated as “insufficient” as well.

    india climate change
    Courtesy: Carbon Action Tracker

    This makes it all the more infuriating that climate change was just not on the ballot in India this year. It mirrors the larger political landscape: only 0.3% of the questions asked in the parliament are about climate change, and just one of the country’s 700-plus parties is focused on the environment.

    But per capita emissions have risen by 93% since 2001, and heat-related deaths increased by 55% from 2000-2004 to 2017-2021. Climate change needs to be on the parliamentary agenda – especially since neither the BJP nor the INDIA coalition made any clear campaign commitments for the climate crisis, with just a handful of eco targets intertwined with promises to grow infrastructure.

    For climate activists, the concern starts at the top, with Modi. This is a man who has infamously compared the changing climate to people’s heightened sensitivity to cold when they age. He has also proclaimed that the “climate has not changed”, but people and their habits have spoiled and destroyed the environment (identifying the very reason that the climate has, in fact, changed).

    As a country, India proved that democracy is still important and alive, and secularism is part of its social fabric. In a climate election year, its voting surprised everybody – but now, its farmers, islanders, and climate-vulnerable citizens are hoping that the government springs a surprise too. It’s imperative that it does.

    The post Was the World’s Largest Election Decided By the Climate Crisis? appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Defend ‘Pacific voice’ over geopolitics, climate crisis – keep pressure on decolonisation, Robie tells Wansolwara

    By Monika Singh in Suva

    New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) awardee Professor David Robie has called on young journalists to see journalism as a calling and not just a job.

    Dr Robie, who is also the editor of Asia Pacific Report and deputy chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network, was named in the King’s Birthday Honours list for “services to journalism and Asia Pacific media education”.

    He was named last Monday and the investiture ceremony is later this year.

    PACIFIC MEDIA CONFERENCE 4-6 JULY 2024
    PACIFIC MEDIA CONFERENCE 4-6 JULY 2024

    The University of the South Pacific’s head of journalism Associate Professor Shailendra Singh told Wansolwara News: “David’s mountain of work in media research and development, and his dedication to media freedom, speak for themselves.

    “I am one of the many Pacific journalists and researchers that he has mentored and inspired over the decades”.

    Dr Singh said this recognition was richly deserved.

    Dr Robie was head of journalism at USP from 1998 to 2002 before he resigned to join the Auckland University of Technology ane became an associate professor in the School of Communication Studies in 2005 and full professor in 2011.

    Close links with USP
    Since resigning from the Pacific university he has maintained close links with USP Journalism. He was the chief guest at the 18th USP Journalism awards in 2018.

    Retired AUT professor of journalism and communication studies and founder of the Pacific Media Centre Dr David Robie
    Retired AUT professor of journalism and communication studies and founder of the Pacific Media Centre Dr David Robie. Image: Alyson Young/APMN

    He has also praised USP Journalism and said it was “bounding ahead” when compared with the journalism programme at the University of Papua New Guinea, where he was the head of journalism from 1993 to 1997.

    Dr Robie has also co-edited three editions of Pacific Journalism Review (PJR) research journal with Dr Singh.

    He is a keynote speaker at the 2024 Pacific International Media Conference which is being hosted by USP’s School of Pacific Arts, Communications and Education (Journalism), in collaboration with the Pacific Island News Association (PINA) and the Asia-Pacific Media Network (APMN).

    The conference will be held from 4-6 July at the Holiday Inn, Suva. This year the PJR will celebrate its 30th year of publishing at the conference.

    The editors will be inviting a selection of the best conference papers to be considered for publication in a special edition of the PJR or its companion publication Pacific Media.

    Professor David Robie and associate professor and head of USP Journalism Shailendra Singh at the 18th USP Journalism Awards. Image: Wnsolwara/File

    Referring to his recognition for his contribution to journalism, Dr Robie told RNZ Pacific he was astonished and quite delighted but at the same time he felt quite humbled by it all.

    ‘Enormous support’
    “However, I feel that it’s not just me, I owe an enormous amount to my wife, Del, who is a teacher and designer by profession, and a community activist, but she has given journalism and me enormous support over many years and kept me going through difficult times.

    “There’s a whole range of people who have contributed over the years so it’s sort of like a recognition of all of us, especially all those who worked so hard for 13 years on the Pacific Media Centre when it was going. So, yes, it is a delight and I feel quite privileged.”

    Reflecting on his 50 years in journalism, Dr Robie believes that the level of respect for mainstream news media has declined.

    “This situation is partly through the mischievous actions of disinformation peddlers and manipulators, but it is partly our fault in media for allowing the lines between fact-based news and opinion/commentary to be severely compromised, particularly on television,” he told Wansolwara News.

    He said the recognition helped to provide another level of “mana” at a time when public trust in journalism had dropped markedly, especially since the covid-19 pandemic and the emergence of a “global cesspit of disinformation”.

    Dr Robie said journalists were fighting for the relevance of media today.

    “The Fourth Estate, as I knew it in the 1960s, has eroded over the last few decades. It is far more complex today with constant challenges from the social media behemoths and algorithm-driven disinformation and hate speech.”

    He urged journalists to believe in the importance of journalism in their communities and societies.

    ‘Believe in truth to power’
    “Believe in the contribution that we can make to understanding and progress. Believe in truth to power. Have courage, determination and go out and save the world with facts, compassion and rationality.”

    Despite the challenges, he believes that journalism is just as vital today, even more vital perhaps, than the past.

    “It is critical for our communities to know that they have information that is accurate and that they can trust. Good journalism and investigative journalism are the bulwark for an effective defence of democracy against the anarchy of digital disinformation.

    “Our existential struggle is the preservation of Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa  — protecting our Pacific Ocean legacy for us all.”

    Dr Robie began his career with The Dominion in 1965, after part-time reporting while a trainee forester and university science student with the NZ Forest Service, and worked as an international journalist and correspondent for agencies from Johannesburg to Paris.

    In addition to winning several journalism awards, he received the 1985 Media Peace Prize for his coverage of the Rainbow Warrior bombing. He was on a 11-week voyage with the bombed ship and wrote the book Eyes of Fire about French and American nuclear testing.

    He also travelled overland across Africa and the Sahara Desert for a year in the 1970s while a freelance journalist.

    In 2015, he was awarded the AMIC Asian Communication Award in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

    Professor David Robie (second from right), and USP head of journalism Associate Professor Shailendra Singh, (left)
    Professor David Robie (second from right), and USP head of journalism Associate Professor Shailendra Singh, (left) with the winners of the 18th USP Journalism Awards in 2018. Image: Wansolwara/File

    Geopolitics, climate crisis and decolonisation
    Dr Robie mentions geopolitics and climate crisis as two of the biggest issues for the Pacific, with the former being largely brought upon by major global players, mainly the US, Australia and China.

    He said it was important for the Pacific to create its own path and not become pawns or hostages to this geopolitical rivalry, adding that it was critically important for news media to retain its independence and a critical distance.

    “The latter issue, climate crisis, is one that the Pacific is facing because of its unique geography, remoteness and weather patterns. It is essential to be acting as one ‘Pacific voice’ to keep the globe on track over the urgent solutions needed for the world. The fossil fuel advocates are passé and endangering us all.

    “Journalists really need to step up to the plate on seeking climate solutions.”

    Dr Robie also shared his views on the recent upheaval in New Caledonia.

    “In addition to many economic issues for small and remote Pacific nations, are the issues of decolonisation. The events over the past three weeks in Kanaky New Caledonia have reminded us that unresolved decolonisation issues need to be centre stage for the Pacific, not marginalised.”

    According to Dr Robie concerted Pacific political pressure, and media exposure, needs to be brought to bear on both France over Kanaky New Caledonia and “French” Polynesia, or Māohi Nui, and Indonesia with West Papua.

    He called on the Pacific media to step up their scrutiny and truth to power role to hold countries and governments accountable for their actions.

    Monika Singh is editor-in-chief of Wansolwara, the online and print publication of the USP Journalism Programme. Published in partnership with Wansolwara.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • ‘Outrageous’: Debt Payments for Climate-Vulnerable Nations Reach 34-Year-High

    zambia drought
    4 Mins Read

    The 50 countries most vulnerable to climate change are paying back 15.5% of their government revenues as debt to external creditors, the highest rate since 1990.

    Debt payments by the 50 countries facing the worst impacts of the climate crisis have doubled since the Covid-19 pandemic, reaching their highest levels in 34 years, according to research by UK charity Debt Justice.

    Using data from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the report suggests that climate-vulnerable countries are now paying 15.5% of their revenue to external creditors, up from 7.7% pre-pandemic and 3.7% in 2010 (the lowest level in recent history).

    “Record levels of debt are crushing the ability of the most vulnerable countries to tackle the climate emergency. We need a rapid and effective debt relief scheme to cancel debts down to a sustainable level,” said Heidi Chow, executive director of Debt Justice.

    Zambia’s uneven debt restructuring deal

    climate debt payments
    Courtesy: UNICEF Zambia

    The charity found that Chad – the country most vulnerable to climate change – will pay 19.4% of its revenues to creditors this year. This is followed by four other African countries: Niger (10.4%), Guinea-Bissau (20.6%), Tonga (8.8%), and Sudan (16.6%).

    But the climate-vulnerable nation that will see the highest share of its revenues end up as debt payments is Angola, which will give back a whopping 59.8% of its revenues to external creditors. But this isn’t a one-off, last year, this actually amounted to 60.2% of what the country made.

    Sri Lanka and Zambia are joint second at 43.5%. The former actually had the highest percentage of debt payments last year (86.4%). Zambia, meanwhile, has declared a national emergency due to the ongoing drought, considered its worst in two decades. After three-and-a-half years of negotiations, its government has just sealed a debt restructuring deal with some (not all) of its private lenders.

    This means that banks and asset managers will be repaid 13% more than governments, despite lending at higher interest rates. But while the deal allows for large increases in debt payments if the economy does better than expected, there’s no equivalent clause to decrease payments if a shock (like another drought) occurs.

    Under the debt deal, Zambia will have to pay bondholders like BlackRock $450M this year. “It is outrageous that Zambia’s creditors have demanded a deal where they get huge increases in debt payments if things go well, but no losses if Zambia is hit by disasters such as droughts,” said Tim Jones, head of policy at Debt Justice. “The $450M going to bondholders this year is money which could have been used to respond to the national disaster.”

    Rich countries must cancel debts to help climate-vulnerable nations

    bonn climate change conference
    Courtesy: Amira Grotendiek/UNFCCC

    For 49 countries in the report, 38% of the external interest payments between 2023 and 2030 are earmarked for private lenders, totalling $50.9B. Debt Justice excluded India from this calculation because its large size skews the results, and its external debt payments are relatively low.

    Of the remaining interest payments, 35% go to multilateral institutions, 14% alone goes to China, and 13% to other governments.

    And when you factor in principal payments – the amount originally borrowed – as well, multilaterals will receive 38% of the share ($208.8B), while private lenders will get 30% ($166.6M). This illustrates the high interest rates charged by the latter.

    Debt Justice said its new report explains the urgent need for comprehensive debt relief, so low-income countries can invest in climate change adaptation measures. While two rounds of comprehensive debt relief in the late 90s and mid-00s led to a sharp decline in debt burdens, repayments rose in 2010 and have been soaring since 2020.

    This is because the debt suspension scheme agreed by creditors at the start of Covid-19 has now ended, which means debts are now due to be repaid again. Countries borrowing the capital have also been hit by rising interest rates, compared to rock-bottom levels in the early 2010s. Plus, most debt payments are owed in US dollars, the value of which has increased the size of the debt.

    World leaders are in the middle of a 10-day climate conference in Bonn, Switzerland, which focuses on countries’ ability to finance climate action. And last month, an investigation by Reuters found that rich countries have been funnelling money back into their economies through climate finance programmes – primarily loans and grants with strings attached – putting the Global South in a “new wave of debt”.

    With policymakers discussing climate finance and unsustainable debt levels in Bonn, Jones added: “As well as debt cancellation, rich countries urgently need to pay their climate debt by delivering grant-based, adequate climate finance.”

    The post ‘Outrageous’: Debt Payments for Climate-Vulnerable Nations Reach 34-Year-High appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Queensland Labor may water down proposed ban on faith-based schools discriminating against gay teachers

    Exclusive: Queensland attorney general Yvette D’Ath hoping to avoid ‘a fight with the churches’ before state election, source says

    The Queensland attorney general, Yvette D’Ath, is pushing to water down draft reforms to the state’s Anti-Discrimination Act, amid concern Labor does not want to be drawn into “a fight with the churches” before the state election.

    The state government in 2023 committed in principle to implement all 122 recommendations from the Queensland Human Rights Commission’s 14-month review of the act, which has been largely unchanged since passed by the Goss government in 1991.

    Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

    Continue reading…

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

  • EU Delegation To Tibet – Impacts And Realities

    Image: @tibettruth

    More information, background and context here: https://tibettruth.com/2017/06/26/eu-delegation-to-parts-of-tibet-likely-to-posture-again-while-tibetans-suffer/

    This post was originally published on Digital Activism In Support Of Tibetan Independence.

  • Israel kills 274 plus Palestinians to rescue 4 captives – US allegedly involved in operation

    SPECIAL REPORT: By Yumna Patel

    At least 274 Palestinians were killed and more than 698 others were wounded on Saturday in the central Gaza Strip, in what Israel is celebrating as a “heroic” military operation to rescue four Israeli captives that were being held in Gaza.

    Palestinian media reported intense bombardment in the early afternoon local time in various areas in the Nuseirat and Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

    Video footage from the main market in the Nuseirat refugee camp showed crowds of Palestinian civilians fleeing under the sound of heavy artillery fire.


    Translation: A horrific scene shows the first moments of the [Israeli] occupation committing the Nuseirat massacre in the middle of the Gaza Strip.

    Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif reported that Israeli forces “infiltrated” the Nuseirat refugee camp in trucks disguised as humanitarian aid trucks.

    The Gaza government media office said in a statement that Israeli forces launched an “unprecedented brutal attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp” directly targeting civilians, and that ambulances and civil defence crews were unable to reach the area and evacuate the wounded due to the intensity of the bombing.

    The media office added that according to its count, at least 210 Palestinians were killed and an estimated 400 others were wounded during the Israeli operation.

    Video footage published on social media showed dozens of bodies of men, women and children lying in the streets in the Nuseirat area, as well as bloodied and injured civilians being rushed to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah.

    ‘Complete bloodbath’
    Al Jazeera quoted Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan with Doctors Without Borders as saying the emergency department at Al-Aqsa Hospital “is a complete bloodbath . . . It looks like a slaughterhouse”.

    “The images and videos that I’ve received show patients lying everywhere in pools of blood . . .  their limbs have been blown off,” she told Al Jazeera, adding “that is what a massacre looks like.”

    As the death toll from the central Gaza Strip continued to rise, Israeli reports emerged that four Israeli captives were rescued in the operation and transferred back to Israel.

    The four captives were identified as Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 21, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 40. They were all reportedly taken on October 7 from the Nova Music festival in southern Israel close to the Gaza border.

    According to Israeli media, the four captives were found in good health, and were transferred to a hospital in Israel where they were reunited with their families. One member of the Israeli special forces was killed during the attack.

    The Israeli newspaper Haaretz cited Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari as saying the captives were “rescued under fire, and that during the operation the IDF [Israeli Defence Force] attacked from the air, sea, and land in the Nuseirat and Deir al-Balah areas in the center of the Gaza Strip.”

    Haaretz added that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant approved the operation on Thursday evening. Netanyahu hailed the operation as “successful,” while Gallant reportedly described it as “one of the most heroic operations he had seen in all his years in the defence establishment”, according to Israeli media.

    Families praised military
    The families of Israeli captives held a press conference on Saturday afternoon in reaction to the news. Relatives of the four captives rescued on Saturday praised both the Israeli military and the government.

    Some relatives of the remaining captives still being held in Gaza demanded an end to the war and a prisoner exchange in order to secure the release of those still being held in Gaza.

    On Saturday evening local time, spokesman for the Qassam Brigades Abu Obeida said “the first to be harmed by [the Israeli army] are its prisoners”, saying that while some of the captives were freed in the operation, a number of other Israeli captives were reportedly killed.

    The Israeli government and military have not commented on the reports that Israeli captives were killed in the operation.

    It is reported that there are 120 captives still held in the Gaza Strip, including 43 who have been killed since October, many reportedly by Israel’s own forces.

    On its official Telegram channel, Hamas said the release of the four captives “will not change the Israeli army’s strategic failure in the Gaza Strip” and that “the resistance is still holding a larger number of captives and can increase it.”

    Reports of US involvement in Nuseirat massacre
    As news flooded on the scale of the massacre in central Gaza, and of celebrations in Israel at the release of the four captives, reports emerged of alleged US involvement in the operation.

    Axios, citing a US administration official, reported that “the US hostage cell in Israel supported the effort to rescue the four hostages.”

    Of the operation, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said: “The United States is supporting all efforts to secure the release of hostages still held by Hamas, including American citizens. This includes through ongoing negotiations or other means.”

    Some reports claimed that American forces were involved in the operation on the ground, and that the humanitarian aid trucks that were reportedly used to disguise the entry of special forces into Nuseirat departed from the US built humanitarian pier off the Gaza coast.

    Mondoweiss has not been able to independently verify some of these reports.

    Videos circulating on social media showed the helicopters that were used in the operation to evacuate the Israeli captives taking off from the vicinity of the US pier that was built off the coast of Gaza in order to deliver “much-needed humanitarian aid” to Gaza.

    The US$230 million pier, which was completed last month, has drawn significant criticism from rights groups and activists who say the pier is an ineffective way to deliver aid.

    Intense criticism
    Reported US involvement in the attacks on central Gaza on Saturday, and the alleged use of the pier in the operation, has sparked intense criticism and outrage online.

    In response to the reports, Hamas said it proves “once more” that Washington is “complicit and completely involved in the war crimes being perpetrated” in Gaza.

    US President Joe Biden has not commented on US involvement in the operation, but in response said: “We won’t stop working until all the hostages come home and a ceasefire is reached. It is essential that it happens.”

    Reported by the Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau. Republished under Creative Commons.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Palestinians Face Torture, Starvation and Sexual Violence in Israeli Prisons

    Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians since last October has extended beyond the daily mass death, displacement, and starvation of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip. Behind the bars of Israeli prisons, Israel has been waging war against Palestinian prisoners, creating conditions that make the continuation of human life impossible. The effects of this brutal campaign have reverberated…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Funding for individual women human rights defenders

    Safety Net funding is for individual women human rights defenders (WHRDs) from or working in conflict and crisis affected countries, who, due to their commitments to human rights and peace, currently face – or have faced risks – with resulting impacts that continue to threaten their safety and work. SAFETY NET DOES NOT FUND CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS OR PROGRAM IMPLEMENTATION.

    The WPHF Window for WHRDs Safety Net aims to improve the security and protection of WHRDs by providing for, but not limited to: 

    • Temporary relocation costs (e.g. accommodation, food and transportation) 
    • Security and protection costs (e.g. secure transportation, digital or physical security training) 
    • Equipment (e.g. mobile phone, computer, security system and cameras) 
    • Self-care (e.g. physical or mental health support) 
    • Legal assistance  
    • Repatriation costs, to facilitate return and reintegration in home country

    Safety Net grants are provided for amounts up to USD 10,000 (subject to revision by the NGO partners of the WPHF Window for WHRDs) to cover needs for a duration of up to six months.

    Eligibility Criteria

    • Gender: women and those who identify as women. This includes lesbian, gay, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) human rights defenders.
    • Age: 18 years old and above. 
    • Country of origin: from/working in conflict and crisis-affected contexts. *See for reference countries that might be eligible for support: List of matters of which the UN Security Council is seized: S/2023/10. 
    • Human rights activities: provides details of peaceful engagement in the advancement of human rights, either individually or through a civil society organization.
    • Threats and risks:
      • Demonstrates current or past serious security risks for her and/or her dependents, because of her commitment to human rights and peace; AND/OR
      • Demonstrates that risks are – or have been such – that her ability to keep working on behalf of human rights and peace is threatened.
    • Grant and duration: the requested funding cannot exceed USD 10,000, or cover needs beyond an anticipated 6-month period. 

    Decision-making process

    You can submit your application using one of the two below methods below

    Offline: click the below button to download a Word version of this form, then email it to WPHF-WHRD@unwomen.org.  APPLICATION FORM – FLEXIBLE FUNDINGE nglish

    Online: complete the secure, data encrypted application form below, then click the ‘Submit’ button at the bottom of the page. APPLICATION FORM

    The Window for WHRDs is demand-driven and accepts requests on a rolling basis. 

    For further information on safe online communication, please see: https://ssd.eff.org/en/module/communicating-others. We also encourage you to visit: https://www.accessnow.org/help/ to access 24/7 help in multiple languages to protect yourself online.

    WPHF Funding Window for WHRDs NGO Partners 
    Safety Net (Flexible Funding)

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

  • ‘Greedy lying racists’, ‘Kill the bill’, say thousands of NZ protesters over fast track draft

    Asia Pacific Report

    About 20,000 protesters marched through the heart of New Zealand’s largest city Auckland today demonstrating against the unpopular Fast Track Approvals Bill that critics fear will ruin the country’s environment, undermine the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi with indigenous Māori, and open the door to corruption.

    Holding placards declaring the coalition government is “on the fast track to hell”, “Greedy lying racists”, “Preserve our reserves”, “Kill the bill”, “Climate justice now”, “I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues”, and other slogans such as “Ministers’ corruption = Nature’s destruction”, the protesters stretched 2km from Aotea Square down Queen St to the harbourside Te Komititanga Square.

    One of the biggest banners, on a stunning green background, said “Toitu Te Tiriti: Toitu Te Taiao” — “Honour the treaty: Save the planet”.

    Speaker after speaker warned about the risks of the draft legislation placing unprecedented power in the hands of three cabinet ministers to fast track development proposals with limited review processes and political oversight.

    The bill states that its purpose “is to provide a streamlined decision-making process to facilitate the delivery of infrastructure and development projects with significant regional or national benefits”.

    A former Green Party co-leader, Russel Norman, who is currently Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director, said the the draft law would be damaging for the country’s environment. He called on the protesters to fight against it.

    “We must stop those who would destroy nature for profit,” he said.

    “The vast majority of New Zealanders — nine out of 10 people, when you survey them — say they do not want development that causes more destruction of nature.”

    Other protesters on he march against the “War on Nature” included Forest and Bird chief executive Nicola Toki and actress Robyn Malcolm.

    RNZ News reports that Norman said: “Expect resistance from the people of Aotearoa. There will be no seabed mining off the coast of Taranaki. There will be no new coal mines in pristine native forest.

    “We will stop them — just like we stopped the oil exploration companies. We disrupted them until they gave up.”

    The government would be on the wrong side of history if it ignored protesters, Norman said.

    The "Stop the Fast Track Bill" protest in Auckland
    The “Stop the Fast Track Bill” protest in Auckland today. Image: David Robie/APR

    Public service job cuts ‘deeply distressing’
    In Wellington, reports RNZ News, thousands of people congregated in the city to protest government cuts to public service jobs.

    Protesters met at the Pukeahu National War Memorial for speeches before walking down to the waterfront.

    Public Service Association spokesperson Fleur Fitzsimons told the crowd that everyone at the rally was sending a message of resistance, opposition and protest to the government.

    She accused the coalition government of having an agenda against the public service, and said the union was seeing the destructive impact of government policies first hand.

    “It is causing grief, anguish, stress, emotional collapse,” she said.

    “It is deeply distressing to the workers who are losing their jobs. They are not only distressed for themselves, and their families, but they are deeply worried about what will happen to the important work they are doing on behalf of us all.”

    A protester holds a "Fast track dead end" placard
    A protester holds a “Fast track dead end” placard in Auckland’s Commercial Bay today. Image: David Robie/APR
    Protester Ruth reminds the NZ government "We are the people"
    Protester Ruth reminds the NZ government “We are the people”. Image: David Robie/APR
    The "villains" at today's protest
    The “villains” at today’s protest . . . Prime Minister Christopher Luxon (from left), Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop and Regional Development Minister Shane Jones. Image: David Robie/APR

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Kanaky New Caledonia unrest: ‘People of Palestine and Kanaks are in the frontline’

    By Te Aniwaniwa Paterson of Te Ao Māori News

    Kanak people in Aotearoa New Zealand are lamenting the loss of family and friends in Kanaky New Caledonia, following mass rioting and civil unrest since mid-May prompted by an electoral reform believed to threaten dilution of the indigenous voice.

    A fono (meeting) at Māngere East Community Centre welcomed Kanak people who have been staying in Aotearoa since November last year and were here when the independence protests-turned-riots broke out on May 13.

    The fono on the King’s Birthday holiday was in solidarity with the Kanak struggle for independence from France and drew connections between Kanaky, Aotearoa and Palestine.

    A young Kanak spoke at the fono in French which was translated by a French speaker on the night.

    Te Ao Māori News has chosen not to reveal the identity of these Kanaks.

    “We’re here but we’re not really here because most of us are hurt,” a young Kanak man said.

    “Young brothers and sisters are being killed but we know that our brothers and sisters don’t have weapons.”

    “Some of our families have been killed,” said another young Kanak man whose brother had died.

    “It’s difficult for us ‘cos we’re far from our land, from our home.”

    Officially, seven people had died during the unrest, four of them Kanak and two police officers (one by accident). However, there have been persistent rumours of other unconfirmed deaths.

    Tāngata whenua on mana motuhake for all
    Bianca Ranson (Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Kahu ki Whangaroa) was one of the speakers at the fono and spoke with Te Ao Māori News the following day.

    Ranson is part of Matika mō Paretīnia, a solidarity group that organises in support of the Free Palestine Movement.

    “One of the key messages that we were wanting to to get across or to be able to open up discussion around was settler colonialism . ..  whether that’s for us as tangata whenua here, with the current government, the attack that we’re seeing on our health, on education, whether it’s our treaty, the environment,” she said.

    “But also you know when you really look at the tip of the spear, and of settler colonial violence that’s happening in other places around the world, the people of Palestine and the people of Kanaky are really on the frontline.”

    Tina Ngata has also linked the struggles between Aotearoa and Kanaky and the shared visions of self-determination for Kanak and tino rangatiratanga for Māori, the French government derailing their decolonisation process and the “assimilation policies” that threaten Māori tino rangatiratanga and the right the self-determination.

    Palestinian activist Yasmine Serhan
    Palestinian activist Yasmine Serhan . . . “Any activism that we do in Aotearoa is essentially the extension of the manaaki of tangata whenua.” Image: Te Ao Māori News screenshot APR

    Yasmine Serhan, a Palestinian raised in Aotearoa and speaker at the fono, said a highlight was Ranson inviting the Kanak community to her marae.

    “I just thought that’s like the purest form of connection and solidarity to basically open your home up. Any activism that we do in Aotearoa is essentially the extension of the manaaki of tangata whenua,” she said.

    “So seeing that in live action was really beautiful.”

    The humanisation of resistance
    Serhan also drew the connection between Kanaky, Aotearoa, and Palestine through the shared experience of settler colonialism and violent land dispossession.

    “The space was set up to make it clear that our indigenous struggles aren’t in isolation and they’re not coincidental. They’re all interconnected and the liberation of one of us will lead to the liberation of all of us,” Serhan said.

    “People who spoke from the Kanak community shared that they’re resisting with their bare hands. Basically, that is against an armed military force that’s been sent by France.

    “It’s very similar to what’s happening in occupied Palestine, where they’re sending armed, Israeli occupational forces and people are resisting with their bare hands — basically, for their homes to be safe for their kids, for their schools, for their hospitals.”

    Serhan emphasised the importance of fighting for the humanisation of resistance.

    “The humanisation of our resistance happens when we share our stories, and when we continue to exist and be present in spaces.

    “As a Palestinian person, my people have been resisting our erasure for 76 plus years, and for the Kanaks, it’s 150 years of living under French colonial rule.

    “And we’re still here. We are the grandchildren, the mokopuna of ancestors that they’ve tried to erase and haven’t been successful in erasing.

    “So our existence and presence here today is a very firm standing in our resistance.”

    The barricades and unarmed Kanaks
    One of the Kanaks who spoke at the fono said: “The French government has created organised militia. They have militias of local police to exterminate us.”

    It was reported this week that France had deployed six more Centaures — armoured vehicles with tear gas and machine gun capabilities — to help police remove barricades.

    However, a young Kanak at the fono said: “The barricades are built to protect the areas where people live. We got a video two days ago, 48 hours ago of the gendarmes, the French police, going into the suburbs where people live.

    “They threw homemade gas bombs. People have found weapons from the militia, grenades, bombs and heavy artillery.”

    Jessie Ounei, an Aotearoa-born Kanak woman told Te Ao Māori News there’s a lot of unchecked violence happening in Kanaky.

    “It’s not being reported and the French forces are being left to their own devices.”

    Ounei said there was a video released in the last few days of a young Kanak man who was going to the gas station and was shot in the face with a flash ball.

    “There are right-wing civilians who see as a threat who want to . . .  I guess exterminate us is the nicest way to put that.

    “I just want to say that they’re not being stopped and they’re not being addressed. That’s part of the reason why we have all these checkpoints and barricades, to keep our families safe.

    “To keep our people safe. We have seen that it’s not the French forces that are going to keep us safe. We have to keep ourselves safe.”

    A Kanak flag and dancing on the Māngere East Community Centre marae
    A Kanak flag and dancing on the Māngere East Community Centre marae in solidarity with the independence movement. Image: Kanaky-Aotearoa Solidarity screenshot APR

    Nuclearisation and militarisation of the Pacific
    Ranson talked about imperialism regarding the extraction and exploitation of Kanaky resources that has directly benefitted the settlers and disregarded Kanak leadership or their care for the whenua.

    Nickel mining in Kanaky started in 1864. Kanaks were excluded from the mining industry which has led to pollution, devastated forests, wetlands, waterways, and overall destruction of Kanaky’s biodiversity.

    “There’s also the positioning of France in the wider Pacific,” Ranson said.

    “We have to ask ourselves, why? Why is France in Kanaky? What does that serve in the overall agenda of the French colonial project.”

    At the fono speakers made the connection between France and nuclearisation.

    The French have undertaken nuclear tests in Fangataufa and Moruroa of French Polynesia which media had reported an estimated 110,000 people who had been affected by the radioactive fallout between the 1960s and 1990s.

    In Aotearoa, Greenpeace was protesting the French nuclear tests in Moruroa with their protest fleet the flagship Rainbow Warrior was bombed by French spies in Opération Satanique which led to the death of Portuguese-Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira.

    Ranson also mentioned the coalition government’s positioning of New Zealand.

    “Whether it’s with AUKUS or strengthening our connections with US, there’s some serious, serious concerns that we as indigenous people have. The implications on tāngata moana throughout Te Moana Nui A Kiwa are immense if we are heading down the dangerous pathway of moving away from being a nuclear-free and independent Pacific.”

    An article published by The Diplomat discussed New Zealand and France’s “shared vision for the Indo-Pacific”, which is the strategy launched by the Biden-Harris US administration in 2022 and has been more recently adopted by the French government.

    The US has also conducted nuclear tests in the Pacific in the Bikini Atoll and the Marshall Islands, and is now part of the AUKUS security pact that will lead to nuclear proliferation in the Pacific and militarisation through advanced military technology sharing.

    Opponents of AUKUS argue it compromises the Rarotongan treaty for a nuclear-free zone in the South Pacific.

    Susanna Ounei, the late Kanak activist and mother of Jessie Ounei, has also made the connection between decolonisation and denuclearisation of the Pacific.

    Susanna delivered a speech in Kenya 1985 as part of the United Nations Decade for women.

    Ounei said the colonial government claimed there were 75,000 Kanaks when they arrived, but Kanaks said there were more than 200,000 and only 26,000 after French invaded. This indicated a mass genocide.

    The future of Kanaky
    When asked about her dreams for Kanaky, Jessie Ounei said she wanted an independent Kanaky.

    “I want our people to choose and thrive. I want our people to have the resources to discover their gifts and share it with the world. I don’t want our people to make 90 percent of the incarceration rates or 70 percent of poverty rates.”

    At the end of the night, one of the young Kanaks said: “We just want our freedom. Thank you very much for your support, we all have the same fight.

    Said another Kanak youth: “We are so happy that you have a thought for the young Kanaks here. That you are with us. We’re not feeling that we’re left alone because you are behind us.”

    Although much of what was discussed was heavy and saddening for those in the crowd, the night ended with the crowd dancing and cheering together in solidarity with each other’s struggles and the strength to keep resisting.

    Te Aniwaniwa Paterson is a digital reporter with Te Ao Māori News.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Obituary of Leah Levin: 1926 – 2024

    I am not a professional obituary writer, but I surely wished I were, as writing about my dear friend Leah Levin deserves the best possible skills. Fortunately, I received some excellent input from her caring family of which I am making good use. A celebration of Leah’s life will be held by the family on 13 June, 4 pm BST which can also be followed online.

    For those of you who wish to attend via zoom, here is the link:
    https://ted-conf.zoom.us/j/91594050908?pwd=cE9SaHB4S0JkSW5MWFEwUTdOWmJIZz09

    Leah Levin, was a well-known figure in the international human rights movement of the 1970’s and onwards. She died of cardiac arrest on 25 May, 2024, at the formidable age of 98. For over half a century, she served and led a range of human rights organisations and collaborated globally with some of the world’s leading activists. For which she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Essex in 1992 and an OBE in 2001.

    She was the author of UNESCO’s “Human Rights: Questions and Answers”, one of the world’s most widely disseminated books on human rights, (translated into more than 30 languages).

    From 1982-1992, she was director of JUSTICE, a pioneering organisation that sought to right miscarriages of justice and which was a national section of the International Commission of Jurists . She served as a board member or trustee of the United Nations Association, the Anti-Slavery Society, International Alert, Redress, Readers International and The International Journal of Human Rights. But most of all, I remember her from the work she did to make sure that we would not forget one of our most impressive friends: Martin Ennals, who had led Amnesty from 1968 to 1980 and had been one of her closest friends until his death in 1981. [see his biography in the Encyclopedia of Human Rights, OUP, 2009, Vol 2, pp 135-138].

    Leah’s contribution to the creation and development of the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders was enormous. She stepped down from the board after two decades in 2013.[see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2013/10/07/leah-levin-a-human-rights-defender-of-the-first-rank/].

    Frances D’Souza, said about Leah: “without any pretension she was nearly always right. She hit the nail on the head whether dealing with world affairs or people. She made a significant difference by her wise counsel and fact that she could really see what the issues were, read the situation and do something about it.”

    Leah Levin had the special talent to draw other like-minded people to her and help coalesce a community of activists with whom she would collaborate throughout her entire life.

    Her own life story is one of human rights struggle: Leah was born Sarah Leah Kacev on 1 April 1926 in Lithuania. She grew up as Leah Katzeff in Piketberg, South Africa, a small, rural town in Western Cape to where the family had to flee to escape poverty and anti-Semitism in the difficult years after the First World War and Russian revolution. Levin was the first of four children and the first person in her family to go to university. She graduated in 1945, when at the end of the second world war, the Katzeffs found out that their family along with their entire Jewish community in Mazeikiai, had been murdered by local Lithuanians organized by the Germans in the very first days of the Nazi advance in 1941.

    In 1947 she married Archie Levin, fifteen years her senior. Like Leah, Archie was the child of European Jewish immigrants. Together they set up a new business, writing travel guides to Central and Southern Africa. In 1960, disgusted by the repression of anti-apartheid protest, the couple moved to the British colony of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) with their two children Michal and Jeremy. A third son, David, was born in Salisbury (now Harare).  

    In Rhodesia, Leah completed a second degree in international relations at the University of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, while her husband became politically active. His activities angered those in power; shortly before Rhodesia unilaterally declared independence. Archie was tipped off that he was likely to be arrested. He rapidly left for the UK with his daughter Michal and later was joined by his son Jeremy; a few months later, Levin and her infant son David joined the rest of the family in the UK. 

    In London, Levin found a volunteer post as Secretary of the newly founded United Nations Association. The UNA human rights committee brought together people who became lifelong friends as well as colleagues: Martin Ennals, Sir Nigel Rodney, Amnesty’s first legal officer and later UN rapporteur on torture, and Kevin Boyle, who ran the Human Rights Centre of the University of Essex.  After the death in 1977 of her husband Archie, Levin threw herself still more wholeheartedly into human rights work.  In 1978, she took a job as Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society, which connected her to the United Nations in Geneva. And in 1982 she moved to run JUSTICE for a decade. In 1992, she co-founded Redress, representing victims of torture to obtain justice and reparation for them. 

    Even when fully retired Leah continued to keep an active interest in children and grandchildren as well as her human rights “children”. I will bitterly miss her almost yearly phone calls to check on me to make sure I am doing the right thing.

    See also: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/ac7b872e-5b7d-409f-975b-265a59f5f160

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

  • Communication Crackdown in Federal Prisons Has Been Operating Quietly Until Now

    The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has quietly but steadily been implementing a nationwide policy that silences the voices of people incarcerated in federal prisons by preventing them from sharing the same email and phone contacts for people on the outside, also known as a “double contact ban.” The policy, which gives prison authorities wide leeway to censor communications, appears to have gone…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Arbitrary Deprivation of Nationality in Bahrain: A Legal and Human Rights Crisis

    The Bahraini Constitution of 2002 stipulates that “a person cannot be deprived of its citizenship except in cases of treason” and as provided by law. The acquisition, loss, and withdrawal of citizenship are governed by the Bahraini Citizenship Act of 1963, which has been amended several times, most recently in 2019.

    To suppress dissenting voices, Bahraini authorities have arbitrarily stripped several individuals of their citizenship, leaving them stateless and vulnerable to other human rights violations. The vague and broad wording of the Citizenship Act of 1963, particularly Article 10, allows for citizenship withdrawal if the interests of the Kingdom are at stake. This has enabled extensive use of citizenship revocation against dissidents, perceived as acting contrary to their duty of loyalty towards the Kingdom.

    Following the Arab Spring, nearly a thousand individuals lost their citizenship between 2012 and 2020. Leading Bahraini human rights activists, such as Abdulghani al-Khanjar and Hussain Abdulla, have criticized the Kingdom’s use of citizenship withdrawal as a tool to suppress dissent.

    Individuals have also been denaturalized under Law No. 58 of 2006, which allows for the loss of citizenship for those convicted of certain crimes. In 2019, the Citizenship Act was amended to include terror-related offenses as grounds for revocation. The executive authority, specifically the Cabinet on the proposal of the Minister of Interior, now decides on citizenship withdrawal based on terrorism-related charges.

    Between 2018 and 2019, approximately 300 individuals lost their citizenship due to abuses of power by authorities, often condemned in mass trials lacking due process and fair trial guarantees. In May 2018, 115 people were stripped of citizenship in a single trial, and in February 2019, 167 people were imprisoned for participating in a peaceful sit-in.

    On 16 April 2019, a mass trial resulted in the revocation of citizenship for 138 individuals, with sentences ranging from three years to life imprisonment. Seventeen of those detained were minors aged 15 to 17. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, expressed concern over this decision and urged Bahrain to align its domestic legislation with international human rights commitments. The arbitrary revocation of citizenship breaches Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

    On 21 April 2019, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa issued a Royal Pardon restoring the citizenship of 551 denaturalized individuals. However, many of them cannot fully enjoy Bahraini citizenship or perform their duties as citizens. Some remain imprisoned with long-term or life sentences, others face delays in obtaining citizenship documents, and their children were born stateless. Notably, influential opposition figures and human rights defenders were not among those pardoned

    Zahra Albarazi, an independent consultant on statelessness, highlighted that citizenship revocation is used by states, including Bahrain, as a political tool in violation of international law, leaving people stateless. This method effectively silences opposition by depriving individuals of their right to speak on national issues, as they fear the consequences of statelessness.

    Courtney Radsch, advocacy director at the Committee to Protect Journalists, emphasized that the Bahraini government also targets journalists and bloggers, suppressing freedom of expression and the press. Numerous journalists and bloggers have been imprisoned and denied adequate medical treatment.

    Mouna Ben Garga from the World Alliance for Citizen Participation (CIVICUS) noted that Bahrain is at the forefront of using citizenship revocation to repress dissent. Revoking citizenship strips individuals of their civic rights, preventing them from holding their government accountable and participating in civic life.

    The arbitrary deprivation of nationality in Bahrain remains a profound human rights issue. Despite some gestures towards reform, such as the Royal Pardon, the underlying legal framework and government practices continue to enable the suppression of dissent and the violation of basic human rights. International pressure and continued advocacy are essential to push Bahrain towards aligning its laws and practices with international human rights standards and to protect the rights of all its citizens, including those arbitrarily stripped of their nationality.

    The post Arbitrary Deprivation of Nationality in Bahrain: A Legal and Human Rights Crisis appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

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

  • EHRC inquiry into DWP benefit deaths will EXCLUDE relatives of deceased claimants

    The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is investigating the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)’s inhumane treatment of disabled people claiming benefits. However, there’s one big, glaring problem with this DWP benefit deaths inquiry. The EHRC has now confirmed that it will exclude disabled people and relatives of those who the DWP’s callous policies have killed.

    DWP benefit deaths inquiry

    As the Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey reported in May:

    The inquiry will focus on benefits assessments and how health decisions are made to award or deny disabled people benefits such as Personal Independence Payment (PIP) as well as the Work Capability Assessment that are used to force disabled unemployed people into work – or worse deny them benefits that allow them to live.

    Ostensibly then, a key role of this inquiry will be to review the DWP’s treatment of disabled benefit claimants under UK equality law. Significantly, it launched the probe in response to concerns that disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) have repeatedly raised on benefit deaths.

    This would of course be the tens of thousands of people who have died at the hands of the DWP. As the Canary’s Steve Topple previously detailed, between 2011 and 2021, this amounted to nearly 35,000 people who:

    died either waiting for the DWP to sort their claims or after it said they were well enough to work or start moving towards work.

    However, the EHRC’s inquiry is set to exclude both disabled individuals and people who lost their loved ones to the DWP’s cruel policies and systemic failures.

    Disability News Service (DNS) broke the story that the EHRC had confirmed this as the case. DNS reported that the EHRC:

    confirmed this week that it would not seek evidence from individuals because it did not consider this to be “proportionate”.

    Instead, disabled people who claim benefits, and relatives of claimants who have died, will be expected to contact a “relevant organisation or representative such as an MP to provide their story”.

    In other words, the inquiry will not take testimonies from individual members of the public directly. Instead, it intends to lump these together under DPOs’ responses.

    There’s another catch

    Moreover, as Charlton-Dailey also highlighted, the EHRC is conducting the inquiry over tight, seemingly arbitrary timeframes. As she wrote:

    Whilst past and current ministers and senior officials will be called to explain themselves, there’s of course a catch. The scope of the inquiry is only from 2021 to now.

    What this means, as she also explained, is that some ministers who presided over these unconscionable, avoidable deaths, will be let off the hook entirely. This includes a large portions of Therese Coffey’s time as DWP boss. Gallingly, it also means that Iain Duncan Smith – arguable architect-in-chief who set the DWP’s brutal wheels in motion – will avoid scrutiny.

    To make matters worse, the timeframe also means that the EHRC will likely exclude the deaths before this date. Charlton-Dailey pointed out this includes some of the better-publicly-known cases of disabled benefit claimant deaths such as:

    Errol Graham who starved to death in 2018 after his payments were stopped or Michael O’Sullivan who died by suicide after being declared fit for work.

    The EHRC’s response to DNS shed more light on this, but offered little reassurance. DNS wrote that:

    But when asked this week about the earlier cases, the spokesperson pointed to the inquiry’s terms of reference, which state that the investigation will look at earlier periods “if relevant, necessary and proportionate”.

    He said: “This allows investigators to consider evidence from earlier than 2021 if appropriate and relevant.”

    Unsurprisingly, the spokesperson did not elaborate on exactly what would constitute “appropriate and relevant” in this instance.

    A pointless tick-box investigation?

    All this might understandably have people scratching their heads wondering: what exactly is the point of this inquiry then? Unfortunately, it appears to be another tepid tick-box investigation, which will make no meaningful real-world difference for disabled people.

    Of course, the EHRC’s independence from the toxic Tory government has been questionable at the best of times. Multiple former staff members at the EHRC have previously called out its purported collusion in toeing the Conservative’s political line. Notably, the government appointed the commission’s current chair Kishwer Falkner. She has headed the EHRC’s transphobic positions through its inquiries.

    The EHRC’s decision now to exclude disabled people and relatives of deceased claimants calls its impartiality into question again.

    And incidentally, a UN independent expert even called the commission out on some of its decisions with regards to trans people’s rights. The parallel here of course, is that UN’s top body on disability rights has just this April slammed the DWP’s treatment of disabled people too. In fact, in its scathing report, it lambasted the “systematic violations” of disabled people’s human rights. By contrast however, its inquiry did include testimony from disabled folks and the loved ones of deceased claimants.

    At the end of the day then, this DWP benefit deaths inquiry will be another exercise in letting the Tories off the hook. Will the next incoming government heed its findings? With the two major parties willfully neglecting disabled people or otherwise fixated on punishing them for even daring to exist, it’s doubtful. When it comes down to it, it’s not as if either party is in the habit of listening to inquiries anyway.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Force not the answer in Kanaky New Caledonia, says PANG

    By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist

    A Pacific regional network has deplored what they call increasing brutality on Kanak youth in Kanaky New Caledonia and the deployment of thousands of troops.

    New Caledonia has experienced a wave of violence with Nouméa the scene of riots, blockades, looting and deadly clashes since mid-May.

    France has sent armoured vehicles with machine gun capability to New Caledonia to quell violence.

    In a joint statement, endorsed by more than a dozen groups, including Pacific Elders’ Voice and Pacific Youth Council, the Pacific Network on Globalisation said “liberation” was the answer — not repression.

    “The people of Kanaky New Caledonia have spoken, saying yet again, any and all attempts to determine the future relationship between France and the territory, by force, and without its people, will never be accepted,” the PANG statement said.

    The group wants Paris to implement an impartial Eminent Persons Group (EPG) to resolve the crisis peacefully.

    They also want Paris to withdraw the controversial electoral bill that prompted the violent turn of events in the territory.

    “The Pacific groups, and solidarity partners therefore strongly support the affirmation of the FLNKS and other pro-independence groups — that responding to the current crisis in a political and non-repressive, non-violent manner is the only pathway towards a viable solution,” PANG said in a statement.

    A week after violence broke out in Kanaky New Caledonia on May 13, President Emmanuel Macron flew to the territory for a day to diffuse tensions.

    He promised dialogue would continue, “in view of the current context, we give ourselves a few weeks so as to allow peace to return, dialogue to resume, in view of a comprehensive agreement”.

    Following his departure, FLNKS representatives and other pro-independence voices were neither convinced of the effectiveness of his visit nor of the genuineness of his intentions, the PANG statement went on to say.

    RNZ Pacific has contacted the French Ambassador for the Pacific, Véronique Roger-Lacan, for comment.

    The news service has yet to receive a response.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.