The mission met with civil society representatives and political and institutional leaders and heard the testimony of journalists who cited a growing climate of fear amid a deeply polarized environment, increasingly authoritarian governance, and escalating attacks against the press. Journalists expressed grave concern over their ability to continue operating in the country following the enactment of a Russian-style “foreign agents” law earlier this year.
The mission concluded with a press briefing and will be followed by a detailed report with recommendations.
Move over European convention on human rights likely to put pressure on Tory leadership candidates to follow suit
Boris Johnson has called for a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European convention on human rights, a move likely to increase pressure on those vying for the Conservative leadership to follow suit.
The former prime minister told the Daily Telegraph there was a “strong case” for a vote on the ECHR, which some Tories blame for hampering their efforts to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Pen used in assault on Manahel al-Otaibi, who has been imprisoned for 11 years for ‘terrorist’ tweets after secret trial
A Saudi Arabian fitness instructor and influencer has been stabbed in the face in prison after being jailed in January for promoting women’s rights on social media.
WikiLeaks founder says he pleaded ‘guilty to journalism’ in deal for his release and calls for protection of press freedom
Julian Assange has said he chose freedom “over unrealisable justice” as he described his plea deal with US authorities and urged European lawmakers to act to protect freedom of expression in a climate with “more impunity, more secrecy [and] more retaliation for telling the truth”.
In his first public statement since the plea deal in June ended his nearly 14 years of prison, embassy confinement and house arrest in the UK, the WikiLeaks founder argued that legal protections for whistleblowers and journalists “only existed on paper” or “were not effective in any remotely reasonable time”.
The former security minister Tom Tugendhat has criticised the claim by one of his Conservative leadership rivals that UK special forces are “killing rather than capturing” terrorism suspects, saying they were a “fundamental misunderstanding” of the law of war.
Robert Jenrick, the former immigration minister, has defended his claim on Tuesday, and said it echoed those of the former defence secretary Ben Wallace because of fears that European laws would free any detained assailants.
The Tory leadership candidate made the claim in a campaign video calling for the UK to leave the European convention on human rights
Robert Jenrick is facing condemnation for claiming that UK special forces are “killing rather than capturing” terrorists because of fears that European laws would free any detained assailants.
In a campaign video launched on X, the Conservative leadership candidate made the statement while listing reasons for leaving the European convention on human rights.
Alan Miller, 59, second person in US to be executed via controversial technique, shook and trembled on gurney
Alabama has carried out the second execution in the US using the controversial method of nitrogen gas, an experimental technique for humans that veterinarians have deemed unacceptable in the US and Europe for the euthanasia of most animals.
Alan Eugene Miller, 59, was pronounced dead at 6.38pm local time at a south Alabama prison.
Washington, D.C., September 24, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Egyptian authorities to release Alaa Abdelfattah, a prominent Egyptian-British blogger and writer, upon completion of his five-year prison sentence this Sunday, September 29. Abdelfattah was arrested on September 28, 2019, and in December 2021, he was sentenced to five years in prison, starting from his arrest date, on accusations of spreading false news and undermining state security.
“After serving his five-year sentence, Egyptian-British blogger Alaa Abdelfattah must be released immediately, and all remaining charges against him must be dropped. He deserves to be reunited with his son and family,” said Yeganeh Rezaian, CPJ’s interim MENA program coordinator, in Washington, D.C. “The Egyptian authorities must uphold their own laws and stop manipulating legal statutes to unjustly imprison Abdelfattah. It is a profound disgrace for Egypt to silence such a vital voice of conscience behind bars.”
Abdelfattah’s family and his campaign for release wrote on social media platform X, “We hope that the law will be respected and Alaa will be freed and reunited with his son, Khaled.”
However, Abdelfattah’s lawyer, Khaled Ali, told the independent media outlet Al-Manassa that Abdelfattah is “being subjected to abuse, oppression, and manipulation of legal texts.” Ali said prosecutors calculated the start of the sentence from the date it was ratified on January 3, 2022 — not from the date of his arrest — which means Abdelfattah’s release date is now set for January 2027.
Egyptian authorities’ failure to release Abdelfattah by September 29 would be in violation of articles 482 and 484 of the country’s Criminal Procedure Law.
In April 2024, CPJ and 26 other press freedom and human rights organizations sent a letter to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) urging the UNWGAD to determine whether Abdelfattah’s detention is arbitrary and violates international law.
The 2019 arrest, which took place about six months after Abdelfattah was released after serving a previous five-year sentence, occurred amid a government crackdown on protests demanding that President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi resign. Abdelfattah had posted about the protests and arrests on Facebook and wrote about politics and human rights violations for numerous outlets, including the independent Al-Shorouk newspaper and the progressive Mada Masr news website.
Authorities in Hong Kong have jailed three people for wearing a ‘seditious’ T-shirt and making protest-related graffiti and social media posts, the first imprisonments under the Article 23 security law.
The West Kowloon Magistrate’s Court handed down a 14-month jail term to Chu Kai-pong, 27, the first person to be sentenced under the new law, on Sept. 19.
Chu was found guilty of wearing a T-shirt and a mask emblazoned with a banned slogan of the 2019 protest movement, “Free Hong Kong, Revolution now!” and “Five Demands, Not One Less,” a reference to the five demands of the protest movement that included calls for fully democratic elections.
The court jailed a second defendant, 29-year-old Chung Man-kit, for 10 months after he pleaded guilty to three charges of sedition. Chung had repeatedly scrawled slogans in support of independence for Hong Kong, as well as the “Free Hong Kong” protest slogan, on the back of bus seats in March and April, the court found.
A day later, the same court handed a 14-month jail term to defendant Au Kin-wai, after finding him guilty of “knowingly publishing publications with seditious intent,” based on posts he made to YouTube, Facebook and X calling on ruling Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping and Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee to step down.
What is the Article 23 legislation?
The Safeguarding National Security Ordinance was passed on March 23, 2024, fulfilling the Hong Kong government’s obligations under Article 23 of the city’s constitution, the Basic Law, which gives the law its nickname.
The law covers many of the same offenses as the 2020 National Security Law, but with expanded definitions, new crimes and penalties.
It adds the crime of “treason,” “theft of state secrets” and “external interference” to the statute book, while expanding maximum sentences for “sedition” from to 7 years’ imprisonment, 10 if the person is found guilty of “collusion with external forces.”
Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee, government officials and lawmakers applaud following a group photo, after the Safeguarding National Security Bill, also referred to as Basic Law Article 23, was passed at the Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, in Hong Kong, China March 19, 2024. (REUTERS/Joyce Zhou)
Previously, the charge of “sedition” under colonial-era laws carried a maximum penalty of just 3 years in jail.
Suspects can be detained for up to 16 days before being charged, and be prevented from seeing a lawyer in some circumstances.
In May 2024, police arrested six people under the law for making “seditious” Facebook posts mentioning the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, including vigil organizer Chow Hang-tung.
Rights activists have warned that the law gives officials too much power, especially when it comes to defining what is meant by “collusion with foreign forces” or “state secrets,” or what constitutes subversion.
It is the second national security law to be passed in the city since 2020, and, like its predecessor, applies to speech and acts committed by anyone, of any nationality, anywhere in the world.
Why the need for a second security law?
The Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, also known as Article 23, has been described by Hong Kong-based former Straits Times reporter Ching Cheong, who served a five-year prison sentence in China for “espionage” for doing his job, as a “sword of Damocles” over Hong Kongers’ heads.
According to Ching: “Essentially this law is the culmination of a long-running attempt to graft the ideology, political ideas, and behavioral patterns of the Chinese Communist Party’s totalitarian system onto a pro-Western capitalist society that respects universal values.”
While the 2020 National Security Law was an emergency response from Beijing to what it saw as chaos and instability during the 2019 protests, the Article 23 law was always inevitable, dating back as it did to Sino-British negotiations ahead of the 1997 handover, in which the people of Hong Kong had no say or control.
But the process faced mass popular anger and opposition.
The Hong Kong government was supposed to have passed national security legislation decades ago, but officials shelved the bill following a mass protest in 2003 that took leaders by surprise.
What was the point of the first security law?
The Article 23 legislation remained on ice throughout the mass pro-democracy movements of 2014 and 2019.
Protesters take part in a rally in solidarity with Hong Kong residents, as the Article 23 national security laws come into force, in London, Britain, March 23, 2024. (REUTERS/Hollie Adams)
But when protesters started defacing the emblems of Chinese rule in 2019, both in the Legislative Council and outside Beijing’s Central Liaison Office in Hong Kong, Chinese officials started calling for a crackdown on dissent to prevent “hostile foreign forces” from destabilizing Hong Kong.
At 11.00 p.m. local time on June 30, 2020, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee imposed the Hong Kong National Security Law on the city by inserting it into one of the annexes of its constitution, bypassing the Legislative Council, or LegCo.
More than 10,000 people have been arrested and at least 2,800 prosecuted in a citywide crackdown in the wake of the 2019 protest movement, mostly under public order charges.
Nearly 300 have been arrested under 2020 National Security Law, according to the online magazine ChinaFile.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Luisetta Mudie and Joshua Lipes.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Jasmine Man for RFA Mandarin, Edward Li for RFA Cantonese.
Despite his convictions for corruption and human rights abuses, many see the president who has died at 86 as the country’s greatest leader
At 11.45 on Thursday morning, six white-gloved pallbearers carried a coffin holding the body of the most divisive, beloved and reviled Peruvian politician of the last four decades. They passed the mourners, the cameras and the flag-topped lances of the Húsares de Junín cavalry regiment, and set it down in the hall of Lima’s brutalist culture ministry.
Behind the coffin, holding hands and dressed in black under a pale but warm spring sky, came its occupant’s eldest daughter and youngest son. A crowd of ministers, political allies and military top brass awaited them at the ministry.
‘Dismal’ lack of progress leaves women and girls facing litany of abuses – with no country on track to achieve equality
More than 850 million women and girls are living in countries rated as “very poor” for gender equality, says a new report, subjecting them to a litany of potential restrictions and abuses, including forced pregnancies, childhood marriage and bans from secondary education.
Labour is wrong to put on hold a law that aims to protect staff from external pressures
Michelle Shipworth, an associate professor at University College London (UCL), has for several years taught a “data detectives” masters module on research methods that teaches students to critically appraise the use of data. One exercise involves discussing a Global Slavery Index finding that China has the second highest prevalence of modern slavery in the world, to help students understand the flawed nature of the data on which it is based.
Last October, one Chinese student complained that the example was a “horrible provocation”. Shipworth was asked by her head of department to remove the example from her course. A few weeks later, she was told complaints had been raised about her “bias” against students from China, based on the fact that two Chinese students had been expelled from the university after she discovered they had been cheating; she was told she could no longer teach her module and she should not post on social media about “educational issues about only one country”. The email expressed concern that if there was perception or misperception of bias, this could threaten the commercial viability of UCL courses.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk
The Taliban government in Afghanistan is drawing renewed outrage over a new law banning women’s voices in public, forcing them to completely cover their bodies and faces out of the home, and more. This comes after the Taliban banned women from working in most fields and ended girls’ education past primary school following their takeover of the country in 2021. We speak with Sima Samar, an Afghan human rights advocate and doctor who chaired the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission from 2002 until 2019; she also briefly served as minister of women’s affairs in the interim Afghan government in 2002, after a U.S.-led coalition toppled the first Taliban government for its support of al-Qaeda. “You cannot see such a law in any other regime on this planet,” she says. “This is a crime against humanity. It is gender apartheid.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Absence of legally binding targets for greenhouse gas reductions from 2031-49 deemed unconstitutional
South Korea’s constitutional court has ruled that part of the country’s climate law does not conform with protecting the constitutional rights of future generations, an outcome local activists are calling a “landmark decision”.
The unanimous verdict concludes four years of legal battles and sets a significant precedent for future climate-related legal actions in the region.
New vice and virtue restrictions offer ‘a distressing vision of Afghanistan’s future’, says UN
New Taliban laws that prohibit women from speaking or showing their faces outside their homes have been condemned by the UN and met with horror by human rights groups.
The Taliban published a host of new “vice and virtue” laws last week, approved by their supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, which state that women must completely veil their bodies – including their faces – in thick clothing at all times in public to avoid leading men into temptation and vice.
Exclusive: ‘Loophole’ in England and Wales from Sexual Offences Act is being challenged in human rights court
Thousands of women who were sexually abused as children could be unable to obtain justice because of an anomaly in the law of England and Wales that is being challenged at the European court of human rights.
The case has been brought by Lucy (not her real name), who was 13 when a man 22 years her senior began having sex with her. Despite him admitting it, police told her charges could not be brought because she did not report the alleged offence in time.
Janine Jackson interviewed Inside Climate News‘ Victoria St. Martin about suing Big Oil for the August 16, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: A lot of us have started seeing local weather forecasts with numbers unfamiliar to us for this time of year. As reporters, you could treat that as, “Oh, isn’t that curious? How are folks on the street dealing with this? Are sales of sunscreen going up?” Or, as a reporter, you can seriously engage the predicted, disastrous effects of fossil fuel production as predicted and disastrous—not, though, in terms of what, in other contexts, we would call criminal.
So what does it look like when business as usual is called out as an actual crime? Our next guest is reporting on an important case in a county in Oregon.
Veteran journalist and educator Victoria St. Martin covers health and environmental justice at Inside Climate News. She joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, Victoria St. Martin.
Victoria St. Martin: Thank you so much. I’m so honored to be here.
JJ: So what happened in summer 2021 in northwest Oregon, such that it became the subject of scientific study? What happened there? What were the harms?
VSM: The county called this a “heat dome disaster,” but basically there was a heat dome over three days in June of ’21 that recorded highs of 108°, 112°, 116° Fahrenheit. During that time, 69 people died from heat stroke, and most of them were in their homes.
Typically, in this part of Oregon, they have very gentle summers. The highs top out at about 81°. But this was unprecedented.
And one of the attorneys that is working with the county says this was not an act of God. This was not caused by God, but caused by climate change.
JJ: And that’s exactly the point. Oftentimes, folks might be surprised to hear, but environmental impacts were legitimately, legally written off, if you will, as acts of God. This is just nature, this is just what’s happening. So this is actually something new.
VSM: Yes. The attorney that I was speaking about, his name’s Jeffrey B. Simon; he is a lawyer for the county. He talks about this idea of how, no, this is not an act of God. This catastrophe was caused by “several of the world’s largest energy companies playing God with the lives of innocent and vulnerable people, by selling as much oil and gas as they could.”
JJ: What is a heat dome, just for folks who might not know?
VSM: Let’s see, how would I describe it? I would call it the atmosphere creating an intense umbrella of heat, and especially in areas where they don’t typically see this type of heat, like northwest Oregon. We’ve had heat domes this summer already, all across the nation, in places that typically don’t have this type of high heat.
JJ: So it’s a thing we all need to get familiar with. If you don’t know what it means today, you need to figure it out for tomorrow.
VSM: Yeah, some scientists, they say it’s like the atmosphere traps hot air, and, yeah, I said an umbrella, but like a lid or a cap being put on a bottle, and trapping that hot air for days like it did in northwest Oregon.
JJ: We’ve had issues with news media who want to separate the stories. It’s not that they don’t cover things, it’s that they don’t connect dots. They separate a story from: Here was a heat emergency, in this particular case, and it was horrible, and people suffered from it. And then on another page, or on another day, they’ll have a story about fossil fuel companies lobbyists influencing laws. But part of the problem with news media is they don’t connect these things.
And so I wonder, as a person who, besides being a journalist, a person who thinks about journalism, where are the gaps or the omissions or the missing dots that you think that media could be doing on this could-not-be-more-important story of climate disruption?
Victoria St. Martin: “To connect the dots of the health harms and the climate disasters that are happening, we need to do more.”
VSM: Yes. One of my editors says that covering climate, it’s one of the greatest stories of the century, right, the greatest story of our lifetime, that we are covering. And I think one thing that we did well, journalism-wise, in the past 10 or so years, is we’ve pushed this idea that journalists have to be multidimensional, that they have to know how to edit photo and video and create a graphic and write a story.
But what I think was lost in that, and what is important here and what is missing in these heat dome stories, these stories that are very, very plainly, as you can see, climate change stories, but what is missing here is journalists aren’t necessarily trained to be multidimensional in subject matter.
And while there are environmental desks growing in newsrooms throughout the nation, newsrooms aren’t allowing the journalists interdisciplinary roles, to be able to cover a weather event and talk about climate. And we need to do more of that. I think in order to connect those dots, to connect the dots of the health harms and the climate disasters that are happening, we need to do more of that.
I love how last summer, I think I really saw it come to a head, because the Canadian wildfires came to the East Coast and turned the skies orange in New York. And it was this story you could not ignore anymore. And it forced newsrooms to really start talking about wildfires, and is it safe to breathe the air? And what is the air pollution from a wildfire, and what causes wildfires? I think we need to do more of that.
While I don’t want climate disasters like wildfires to continue to happen, I do want journalists to think on their toes, think on their feet, think multidimensional, and be able to tell stories in a full and nuanced way, because we are not servicing our readers, our viewers, our listeners, if we aren’t. Our viewers, our listeners and our readers are here to get the full story, and we need to give them the full story and the full picture.
JJ: And just finally, in terms of journalistic framework, what I think is so interesting with the Multnomah County story is we’re moving the actions of fossil fuel companies into the category of crime. You knew this was going to cause harm, and you still did it, and it caused harm, and that’s a crime. And I feel like that’s, for journalism, for media, that’s a framework shift. Lobbying is a story, and legislative influence is a story. And then crime is a whole different story, and a whole other page. But if we’re talking about actions that cause people to die, that cause people to be harmed, well, then, a lot of things that fossil fuels companies are doing are crimes, and that’s what’s paradigm-breaking with this Multnomah County story.
VSM: I think also what’s different here is the attorneys reaching out once the county filed suit, once the attorneys filed suit, letting us know what’s happening, making sure that the story is amplified and gets out there. I think I appreciate it always, as a journalist, when there’s an open dialogue, and that I’m able to share the story with readers, viewers and listeners, because I had access to information, I had access to the lawsuit.
I think, what is that saying? When a tree falls in the forest…. I’m so thankful that somebody called me up and said, “Hey, this is what’s happening.” So I think everybody does their part, and I think in this case, it was a moment of allowing journalists to be a part of that process, and to be able to see behind the curtain and see what’s actually happening. Sometimes law can be…
JJ: Opaque.
VSM: …slow and boring and monotonous, and I think, just like anything, like science…. But I think when you allow journalists to have a front-row seat, it helps to tell the story.
JJ: Absolutely.
Well, any final thoughts in terms of what you would like folks to take away from this piece that you wrote about the effort to call fossil fuel companies out for the harms that they’re causing? Any tips for other journalists who might be looking at the same story?
VSM: I think one thing I constantly thought about when I was reporting this story, and something I did not see, is there’s a great database looking at lawsuits that have been filed by states and counties and cities that are seeking damages from oil and gas companies for the harms caused by climate change.
Again, there are about three dozen lawsuits out there right now, but this is one of the only lawsuits that is focused on a heat dome. And so this is what makes that case unique. This is what sets this case apart from the rest. And, for me, that was important to report.
So I’m thankful that you got to read it, and that others have gotten to read it, and I hope more people read about it. I think that was key here, and that was something I did not see before. There are other lawsuits, but this one, a lot of law experts think, could really change the game here, because it’s focusing on a specific disaster, and how this county is going to pay for the costs that they’ve incurred from the effects of the heat dome.
I think for journalists, when we’re reporting on these things, think of ways to get ahead of the pack, think of what makes the story unique, what sets the story apart from other weather event stories, or other climate change stories, and how to really help paint a picture about how important this story is.
Sixty-nine people died over the course of three days. That is huge, and it is something that, for me, needed to be at the top of the story. The fact that this was one of the only cases that looked at heat dome disasters, that was something that needed to be at the top of the story for me. And I hope to keep reporting on this, so I can’t wait to see what happens next.
JJ: All right, then. We’ve been speaking with journalist Victoria St. Martin. You can find her work on this and other stories at InsideClimateNews.org. Victoria St. Martin, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
New York, August 23, 2024— The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned about a new law, to be enforced by the Taliban’s morality police, which bans journalists from publishing or broadcasting content that they believe violates Sharia law or insults Muslims.
“The Law for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice grants the Taliban’s notorious morality police extensive powers to further restrict Afghanistan’s already decimated media community,” said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Beh Lih Yi. “This law marks yet another appalling blow to press freedom in Afghanistan, where the morality police has worsened a crackdown on journalists and fundamental human rights for the past three years.”
Article 17 details the restrictions on the media, including a ban on publishing or broadcasting images of living people and animals, which the Taliban regards as unIslamic. Other sections order women to cover their bodies and faces and travel with a male guardian, while men are not allowed to shave their beards. The punishment for breaking the law is up to three days in prison or a penalty “considered appropriate by the public prosecutor.”
In its annual report this month, Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice said, without providing details, that it had “successfully implemented 90% of reforms across audio, visual, and print media” and arrested 13,000 people for “immoral acts.” Several journalists were among those detained.
Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment via messaging app.
Ashraf al-Muhtaseb is a musician who described leaving Israel’s jails with no hearing in his left ear, four fractured ribs and a broken hand, so ill and weak from hunger he could no longer walk.
Dropped at an Israeli checkpoint on his own, he says he began crawling towards his home in the occupied West Bank town of Hebron, until a passerby picked him up.
Gabriela Rodriguez was fired from her job over a minor misdemeanour. Now she and others like her are fighting back
At the moment when Gabriela Rodriguez discovered she had been sacked for eating a tuna sandwich, she was carrying the bins out. Removing rubbish bags from the office in Finsbury Circus – an elegant, towering ring of neoclassical buildings that sits at the heart of London’s financial district – formed a key part of Rodriguez’s daily duties. So did wiping surfaces, scrubbing dishes in the kitchen, restocking basic supplies and all the other quietly essential activities that enable a busy workplace to function. “I’m proud of my job: it’s honest, and important, and I take it very seriously,” she says. Which is why, when the call from her manager flashed up unexpectedly on her mobile last November, nothing about it seemed to make any sense.
“He ordered me to come back inside and hand over my security pass immediately,” she says. Rodriguez was at a loss, until the words “theft of property” were mentioned – an act of gross misconduct, and a criminal offence under English law. “That’s when it began to dawn on me,” she says, shaking her head. “This was about a leftover piece of bread. And I was going to be dismissed for it.”
New law comes into force stopping most serious offenders getting married or entering into civil partnerships behind bars
The serial killer Levi Bellfield has been blocked from having a civil partnership, after a new law came into force stopping the most serious offenders getting married behind bars.
Bellfield is serving two whole-life orders for killing Milly Dowler, Marsha McDonnell and Amélie Delagrange, as well as the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy.
Detention of reporters for covering sensitive news is having a ‘chilling’ effect on free media in Somalia, say rights groups
The arrest of a journalist for reporting on drug use in the Somali military is the latest incident in an apparent clampdown on critical reporting in the country, which is having a “chilling” effect on Somalia’s media, rights campaigners said.
AliNur Salaad was detained last week and accused of “immorality, false reporting and insulting the armed forces”, after publishing a now-deleted video suggesting that soldiers were vulnerable to attacks by al-Shabaab militants because of widespread use of the traditional narcotic khat.
Indictment comes as nine other soldiers appear in Israeli military court over allegations of sexual abuse of detainee
Israel’s military has charged a reservist with aggravated abuse of Palestinian prisoners, a spokesperson said on Tuesday, as nine other soldiers appeared in military court for an initial hearing over allegations they had sexually abused a detainee from Gaza.
The new indictment alleges that the unnamed soldier, assigned to escort handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinians, used a baton and his assault rifle to attack prisoners on multiple occasions.
Civil society organisations demand home secretary protects the ‘safety valve’ of democracy
Environmental groups are among 92 civil society organisations who have warned Yvette Cooper against “the steady erosion of the right to protest” in the UK, and called on her to reverse the previous government’s crackdown on peaceful protest.
“The right to protest is a vital safety valve for our democracy and an engine of social progress,” the letter, delivered on Friday, said. “The achievements of peaceful protest are written on the labour movement’s own birth certificate.”
As their families await justice, Jayro Bustamante’s movie, Rita, highlights the bravery of victims of 2017 blaze, and the authorities’ failure to protect them
Ada Kelly Alfaro says the cries from friends asking for help still haunt her daughter, Cynthia Phaola Morales, seven years after she survived a fire at a children’s shelter in Guatemala that killed 41 girls.
Cynthia was one of only 15 survivors of the blaze at the Virgen de la Asunción (HSVA), in San José Pinula, just outside Guatemala City, which broke out on the morning of 8 March 2017.
Saudis living in the UK claim Riyadh is targeting them for speaking out on human rights and jailing of female activists
Saudi exiles living in the UK have spoken of threats to their lives and harassment over their support for improvements in human rights in their home country.
Saudi Arabia has been attempting to present itself as a reformed state since the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi by a Saudi hit squad at its consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
It has spent billions on sporting deals and promoting tourism in the country and was recently named host of a UN commission on women’s rights, despite what Amnesty International called its “abysmal” record on women’s rights.
What does July mean? To some, it’s marks a new financial year. For others, it might be just another day, a new month. For those with lived experience of domestic violence in New South Wales, this particular July is significant.
For the first time, in any state of Australia, coercive control will become a criminal offence, in Section 54D of the Crimes Act (NSW) 1900 This means that victim/survivor experiences of intimate partner abuse will more properly be reflected in our legislation, in the way they tell us they have lived it.
Coercive control, as stated by Commonwealth Attorney General Mark Dreyfus in September 2023, almost always underpins domestic and family violence. We can think about it as the organising principle of intimate partner abuse – a toolbox from which an abuser may mix and match the various kinds of abuse, tailoring them to a particular relationship.
For example, in the case of Lisa Harnum, who was murdered by her partner in 2011, the relationship featured his extreme control and isolation of Lisa from friends, family and social networks, technological surveillance, with cameras everywhere in their apartment, and interference with her employment.
The history of Hannah Clarke, pictured, who was murdered in 2020 along with her three children, reflects behaviour by her husband of extreme sexual jealousy, sexual coercion, abduction of children, control of her clothing choices, and threats of suicide upon the ending of the relationship.
The ultimate aim of coercive controllers is to get what they want using dominance – to have the final say in decision making, to have more leisure time and get out of family responsibilities, to have their partner all to themselves, to have their needs met and their dinner on the table, to have compliant children, sex whenever they want on their terms, and not to have to compromise.
Abusers may lean heavily to gender roles and expectations in their treatment of their partners, expecting spotless homes, ‘perfect’ mothering and sexual compliance. The cumulative impact is a pattern of behaviour exhibited by an abuser over time which has a significant, detrimental effect on a victim, scaring them, isolating them, eroding their self-esteem, and making them unsafe.
There is a strong nexus between coercive control and domestic homicide. A review of NSW imtimate partner homicide deaths conducted between 2019 and 2021 found that 97% of victims had experienced coercive, controlling behaviours before being killed.
The NSW Parliamentary Joint Select Committee determined unanimously in 2022, following the testimony of survivors, services and frontline responders, that coercive control should become an offence – not just because it can lead to homicide, but that it is a crime in and of itself, depriving a victim of their full potential, self-expression, and individuality.
This marked shift in our understanding and prosecution of domestic violence is a welcome step forward, building on years of scholarship and front-line work to build a true picture of the lived experience of intimate partner abuse. It is supported by an overwhelming majority of survivor voices.
The corresponding community education campaigns are raising awareness and carry forward momentum for greater societal understanding of the drivers and presentations of abuse amongst our friends, colleagues, family members and local communities.
This new era of coercive control as a criminal offence also holds potential not only to save the lives of women and children, but to reduce future violence and abuse, in holding abusers accountable for their actions.
Picture at top: The late Hannah Clarke (left) and Rowan Baxter their children, also deceased. Credit: Courtesy of Hannah’s friends and family.
The cruelties inflicted years ago at Nyayo are barely known in Kenya. Now survivors want to help the nation remember
The 56 days that Patrick Onyango spent in Kenya’s dark, damp Nyayo House torture chambers remain clear in his mind. It was three deacdes ago that Onyango, now 66, knew that his opposition to the autocratic rule of Kenya’s second president, Daniel arap Moi, was to be punished when uniformed policemen seized him in the middle of a class he was teaching in Kisumu, the port city in western Kenya, bundling him on to a helicopter and whisking him to the capital, Nairobi.
There he was shuttled from one prison cell to another for nearly a week, he says, before being blindfolded and taken through a narrow tunnel to the cells of the infamous Nyayo torture chambers.
Istanbul, July 8, 2024—Jordanian authorities must immediately drop all charges against journalist Ahmed Hassan al-Zoubi, release him from jail, and stop using the Cybercrime Law against journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Monday.
On July 2, Jordanian authorities arrested al-Zoubi, a satirical journalist and publisher of the Sawalif news website, 11 months after he was fined 50 dinars (US$70) and sentenced to one year in prison for a Facebook post criticizing the government’s position on a controversial December 2022 transportation workers’ strike, according to multiplemediareports and al-Zoubi’s lawyer, who spoke to CPJ.
Al-Zoubi is now in Marka prison in the capital, Amman, his lawyer, Khaled Jit, told CPJ via messaging app.
“Jordanian authorities are stepping up censorship and arrests of journalists instead of allowing them to express themselves freely,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna in New York. “Jordanian authorities must immediately release journalist Ahmed al-Zoubi, drop all charges against him, and stop using cybercrime laws to punish journalists.”
Al-Zoubi was convicted under Jordan’s Cybercrime Law of “the crime of performing an act that led to provoking conflict between the elements of the nation.”
Al-Zoubi’s lawyer told CPJ that there were procedural errors during the trial and asked the court to consider an alternative punishment to prison.
Khaled Qudah, a member of the Jordanian Journalists’ Syndicate, told CPJ that the organization respects the judiciary and its decisions, but that legal decisions and procedures regarding freedom of speech needed revision.
Al-Zoubi’s arrest comes weeks after the Soloh Court in Amman sentenced journalist Heba Abu Taha to one year in prison after convicting her of violating the Cybercrime Law for “inciting discord and strife among members of society” and “targeting community peace and inciting violence.”
The arrest also follows a decision in May to shutter the Al-Yarmouk TV channel in Jordan, where al-Zoubi worked years earlier.
CPJ’s email to Jordan’s Ministry of Justice for comment did not immediately receive a response.
