Home secretary confirms government considering fitting some migrants with electronic tags
Suella Braverman has said the government will “do whatever it takes” if its plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda is “thwarted in Strasbourg”, and confirmed the government is considering fitting some migrants with electronic tags.
In an interview with the BBC, the home secretary stepped up her attack on the European court of human rights (ECHR), calling it politicised and interventionist.
(image: New Disabled South)
This week on CounterSpin: “We’ve come a long way but there’s a long way to go” is a familiar, facile framing that robs urgency from fights for justice. It’s the frame that tends to dominate annual journalistic acknowledgement of the Americans with Disabilities Act, passed 33 years ago in late July.
Like Black history month, the ADA anniversary is a peg—an opportunity for journalists to offer information and insight on issues they might not have felt there was space for throughout the year. As depressing as that is, media coverage of the date often doesn’t even rise to the occasion. You wouldn’t guess from elite media’s afterthought approach that some 1 in 4 people in this country have some type of disability, or that it’s one group that any of us could join at any moment.
Likewise, you might not understand that the ADA didn’t call for curb cuts at every corner, but for an end to “persistent discrimination in such critical areas as: employment, housing, public accommodations, education, transportation, communication, recreation, institutionalization, health services, voting and access to public services.” Nothing less than the maximal integration of disabled people into community and political life—you know, like people.
And if that’s the story, it’s clear that it demands all kinds of attention, every day—not a once a year pat on the back about “how far we’ve come.”
We talk about some of all of that with Kehsi Iman Wilson, co-founder and chief operating officer of New Disabled South.
Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at recent press coverage of the Maui fires and the climate crisis.
The post Kehsi Iman Wilson on Americans with Disability Act appeared first on FAIR.
This post was originally published on CounterSpin.
Janine Jackson interviewed the Center for Constitutional Rights’ Baher Azmy about the Abu Ghraib lawsuit for the August 18, 2023, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
New York Times (8/8/23)
Janine Jackson: Earlier this month, the New York Times ran a report on the Arlington National Cemetery burial of Ian Fishback, a former Special Forces officer who, as the Times said, “dared to challenge the Army on its soldiers’ sustained abuse of Iraqi and Afghan men in their custody.”
Fishback’s testimony “unequivocally characterizing the soldiers’ behavior as torture,” the paper explained, “shattered the Pentagon’s insistence that the torture in [Abu Ghraib] was an isolated case,” but it did lead to personal harm and hardship for Fishback.
Of course, the actions that Fishback was moved to denounce had horrific and enduring impacts on many other people, starting with the victims of the torture.
The Times has unfortunately been not particularly interested in the stubborn insistence of those people in having their case heard. One piece in March noted that opponents of the Iraq War say that “the shame of the American abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib…have not been forgotten by history,” but it’s disheartening that that sentence appeared within a piece centered on how George W. Bush “doesn’t second-guess himself on Iraq.”
The ongoing case against military contractor CACI Premier Technology, Inc., hired to provide interrogation services at Abu Ghraib, is a chance for reporters to prevent our forgetting.
The Center for Constitutional Rights has been leading that case, which a federal judge has just said can move forward, since June 2008. We’re joined now by phone by Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Baher Azmy.
Baher Azmy: Thank you for having me.
JJ: If you would ground us, first of all, with some context: This case is against a military contractor, not against the US government per se, and it’s about just a handful of plaintiffs. It’s not the be-all, end-all on the horrors of Abu Ghraib, much less the invasion and the war, but it is the last case standing, and it carries meaning, within itself and beyond itself, would you say?
BA: Yeah, that’s right. This is actually the third of three cases we brought on behalf of Iraqi victims of torture by the US government and private military contractors in Iraq and Abu Ghraib.
One case was thrown out by the DC Federal Court of Appeals, led by Kavanaugh, with a dissent from then-Judge Garland; a second case on behalf of 71 individuals brought against a translation company, L-3 Services, that settled favorably; and this, the third, is brought on behalf of three remaining plaintiffs, three victims of torture at the so-called “hard site” at Abu Ghraib, where all of the depictions of torture we have seen were revealed.
And it’s very challenging to sue the US military for torture, but US generals did an investigation of the torture at Abu Ghraib and identified that private military contractors, including CACI, had a preeminent role.
CACI sent a number of untrained individuals to serve as interrogators, under a very profitable $35 million contract. And as the reports and the evidence revealed, in the command vacuum that occurred at Abu Ghraib, it was CACI interrogators who were telling military police, including people you might recognize if you’re old enough—Lynndie England, Ivan Frederick and Charles Graner—to “soften up” detainees via torture for later interrogation by CACI.
So this seeks accountability against the private military contractor for actions that US service members spent considerable time in a military brig for, and it seeks to close that accountability gap, and hold this profit-making enterprise accountable for its clear role in contributing to the torture and abuse of our plaintiffs.
JJ: I don’t know if it matters to say at this point that prisoners in Abu Ghraib were not criminals—these were not people who were charged and convicted—but maybe that’s worth mentioning here.
BA: Correct. And there are clear, clear duties under the laws of war with respect [to] what is called cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment. And, notably, the judge in this case has found sufficient evidence that CACI was a direct conspirator, aided and abetted the actual torture of our clients, so enough evidence that a jury could find them liable, and that’s what we’re hoping will be the next step in front of a United States jury.
CounterSpin (5/27/16)
JJ: CACI says, as I understand it, that since the United States would have immunity in this case, well, then, we were working for them, so we also have immunity. What do you have to say? I remember an interview with deeply missed CCR president Michael Ratner, explaining in 2004, that this idea that torture isn’t torture came in with US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and things went south at that point.
But that’s CACI’s line, that since we’re acting as the government, we therefore have immunity against these charges?
BA: Yeah, it’s interesting. The subtext of this is a really disturbing pattern among all private military contractors, which I think is seeking precisely this: Even though they act for profit, have no sovereign responsibilities, are in no way politically accountable, democratically accountable, they want to assume the same benefits as the government, as if CACI was a sovereign entity rather than a profit-making entity. That seems like a terrifying notion for me.
And the subtext is, I think, ultimately, from a range of private military contractors, to get the law and the police to fulfill a kind of Erik Prince–ian vision, where private military contractors can go into war spaces and enjoy the same immunity as the United States government.
And so far, the courts have plainly resisted that: You’re not allowed to assume the immunity of the United States government if you yourself have broken the law, even as a contractor.
And the courts have rejected CACI’s argument, building on what John Yoo and Dick Cheney have said—that these are not legal questions, they’re political questions, that they’re out of the jurisdiction of the courts, what we choose to do with prisoners during wartime. And the court flatly rejected that, and said they can be accountable for torture, even if they were participating with the military.
JJ: All right, then. Well, for many people, Abu Ghraib is a series of horrific photographs, and maybe the government’s efforts to suppress them, the media’s release of them, and then a kind of collective gasp—”shocking the conscience,” we heard.
But then we got the sense, vaguely speaking, that since we’ve had our conscience shocked, we’ve addressed it, and so let’s all move on from that difficult time.
But if no real deep-going, up-to-the-top accountability happens, aren’t we just setting ourselves up for the next, “Oh my gosh, that’s terrible” that’s carried out in our name?
Baher Azmy: “The problem with not holding high-level officials to account is these abuses get replicated and indeed escalated.” (image: Democracy Now!, 8/8/23)
BA: I really quite agree, as someone who’s been heavily involved and early involved in the responses to the human rights crisis created by the Bush administration and the lawlessness there. I draw a connection between the kind of soft authoritarianism of the Bush administration, and the sanctioned lawlessness and demand for impunity and subverting US institutions and constraints on executive power, to the kind of hard authoritarianism that the Trump administration embraced.
I mean, should we really be surprised by the Muslim ban that Trump escalated, given what the Bush administration tried and largely got away with? Should we be surprised with lawyers, like John Yoo in the torture context and John Eastman in the insurrection context, trying to sanction or legitimize, under law, subverting American institutions?
I think precisely the problem with not holding high-level officials to account is these abuses get replicated and indeed escalated.
JJ: Well, we’re going to end on that important note. We’ve been speaking with Baher Azmy, legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights. You can track their work, including on this case, which is not closed but is going forward, at CCRJustice.org. Baher Azmy, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin
BA: Thank you very much.
The post ‘CACI Aided and Abetted the Torture of Our Clients’ appeared first on FAIR.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
Three black men jailed under joint enterprise law, which is often based on ‘dubious evidence’ of gang membership, says Liberty
The human rights campaign group Liberty has backed three black men who are contesting their murder convictions on the grounds of institutional racism by Greater Manchester police and the criminal justice system.
Liberty has made its own submission to the Criminal Cases Review Commission to support the application made in May by the three men, Durrell Goodall, Reano Walters and Nathaniel “Jay” Williams, who are serving life sentences.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Rightwing PM Giorgia Meloni has demanded councils register only biological parents on birth certificates, leaving partners in legal limbo
Whether it is school runs or doctors’ visits, Maria Silvia Fiengo and Francesca Pardi have always shared in the raising of their four children. But in recent months – after Italy’s rightwing government began cracking down on the listing of same-sex parents on birth certificates – the life they have forged together has been thrust into uncertainty.
“We’re a bit worried. You never know what is going to happen,” said Fiengo. “Our children have had two parents from the very first moment they were dreamed of and brought into the world. But we’re not protected by any law.”
Campaigners say rape and trafficking victims have been betrayed by the Tories’ failure to appoint commissioners to defend them
Government ministers have “heartlessly” betrayed rape and trafficking victims after failing to fill two key independent watchdog roles designed to defend human rights, campaigners have said.
Next month, the role of the victims’ commissioner for England and Wales will have been left vacant for a year, at a time when vital legislation is passing through parliament.
In the ongoing session [1] of the Rajya Sabha, the seat of the former Indian Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh was shifted from first to last row, due to health issues inhibiting his ability to walk to the first row. This has led to a debate regarding the accessibility of public buildings for persons with disabilities. It leaves behind a pertinent question, when the parliament of the country is not accessible for persons with disabilities, how accessible are other buildings and offices of public importance?
Out of all other institutions, the need to revamp the educational institutions, be it public or private is more than ever before, especially when we recently observed the 30 years of Unni Krishnan vs. The State of Andhra Pradesh [2], wherein the Right to Education was included within the ambit of Right to Life under Article 21 [3] of the Constitution of India. This right to education was later explicitly inserted under Article 21A [4] of the Constitution by way of the Constitution (Eighty-sixth Amendment) Act, [6] 2002. Reading Article 21 with Article 15 [5] of the Constitution construes that inaccessibility to educational institutions of the persons with disabilities amounts to violation of their fundamental rights.
Under section 16 [7] of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 (hereinafter referred to as the ‘2016 act’), government funded or government affiliated educational institutions are mandated to provide inclusive education to children with disabilities. This includes both the public and private educational institutions. However, the UDISE+ [8] data reflects that for the year 2019-20, only 0.98 percent of the children with disabilities out of the total population were enrolled at the primary level schools. Not only this, the figures for the year 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2016-17 show that, excluding the trends of senior secondary level schools for the year 2016-17, the enrolment rates have been gradually decreasing across all levels each year. This clearly indicates that the legislation, in spite of being well-intentioned, has failed to uplift the level of integration of children with disabilities.
Primarily, the failure of the legislative provisions in place to effectuate the benefits of these welfare legislations can be attributed to two reasons. Firstly, no concrete and earnest efforts have been taken to streamline the implementation of existing legislative provisions for persons with special needs and secondly, there is a lack of institutional support from the state. In Rajive Raturi v. Union of India [9], the Supreme court argues about the shift in the approach of dealing with persons with disabilities. The court opines that the objective should not be to view them as “abnormal, deserving of pity and care, and not as individuals who are entitled to enjoy the same opportunities to live a full and satisfying life as other members of society”. Rather, the state should endeavor to uphold their dignity and to cease their exclusion from mainstream society. This can be achieved through ensuring higher rates of enrolment of children with special needs in public and private schools and universities. The aim is to broaden the discourse from mere attainment of literacy to securing higher education and employment opportunities.
Section 16 (ii) [10] of the 2016 act mentions that the campus, building and other facilities of the educational institutions should be accessible to children with disabilities. Now, most of the educational buildings evade the mandatory application of this provision as there is no mechanism to enforce them upon the institutions. Thus, in order to effectuate the mandates of the 2016 act, there is a need for an amendment to the act to include a provision for the establishment of a ‘Regulatory Authority.’ In such a case, every public funded institution or institution officially recognised by the government, whether school or university, would have to get a ‘green signal’ from the regulatory authority. In the case of private institutions, the union and the state governments can come up with concerted schemes to allocate funds for revamping and realigning low-budget institutions according to the needs of making it accessible for persons with disabilities. In the initial period, this scheme could incentivise and provide support to the schools and colleges to comply with the guidelines of the regulatory authority.
The regulatory mechanism could contain provisions mandating procurement of special reading materials for students with visual impairment. Every university hostel must have specific rooms catering to the needs of students with disabilities. On February 14, 2023, the apex court in Rajneesh Kumar Pandey & Ors vs. Union of India [11] sought details from the state governments of different states regarding the total number of children with special needs in the state, total special teachers enrolled and total vacancies in the state. The court also ordered to give details pertaining to the ad hoc appointment of teachers and to provide a stipulated time frame to fill up these vacancies.
Another aspect is the institutional support from the state’s end. One instance of this could be the Nyaya Bandhu scheme, which has been initiated under the Ministry of Law and Justice of the Government of India, wherein the ministry has collaborated with 69 law schools across India in order to expedite the dispensation of legal services amongst the target groups. Under the scheme, the legal aid clinics of the law schools also receive funds on a regular basis from the ministry. Similarly, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment could also collaborate with educational institutions across the country for the empowerment of students with special needs within the educational institution and beyond it. Under this scheme, a welfare committee catering to the needs and interests of the students with special needs can be established in universities and colleges.
The 2016 act is progressive in terms of recognising the roadblocks for persons with special needs to have the ability to live a dignified and meaningful life. However, the act has achieved only a stunted outcome in terms of making the educational institutions accessible for persons with special needs. India’s present disability rights law is riddled with issues of inconsistency and non-compliance. It thus, needs to be shielded with regulatory and institutional mechanisms for its effective implementation, lest it will turn into merely a toothless tiger.
This post was originally published on LSE Human Rights.
Detainees at Jau prison that mainly houses prisoners of conscience began refusing food on 7 August
At least 500 prisoners are on hunger strike inside a Bahraini prison primarily used to detain prisoners of conscience, refusing food in protest at their detention conditions.
Detainees began refusing food on 7 August, and increasing numbers have joined since.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
As Maui sweeps up the ashes from America’s deadliest wildfire, water-logged Vermont can’t get a respite from the rain. Meanwhile, Arizona just declared a heat emergency and large swaths of the country are seeing their thermometers climb to levels the government considers dangerous.
Amid 2023’s summer of climate discontent, the nation’s grandest plan yet to rein in runaway greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change is turning one: the Inflation Reduction Act.
“This bill is the biggest step forward on climate ever,” said President Biden, one year ago today, just before signing the legislation, abbreviated the IRA. That White House celebration came after months of negotiation, and the President’s supporters greeted him with cheers, music and pomp.
Wide-ranging in scope, the Inflation Reduction Act included changes such as allowing the government to negotiate prescription drug prices and raise taxes on corporations, but at its heart, the IRA is a climate bill. Inside the 730 page bill are close to $369 billion in spending and tax credits designed to move the United States toward a cleaner energy future. A recent report from the Rhodium Group, an analytics firm that tracks greenhouse gas emissions, estimates that the IRA will reduce national greenhouse gas emissions to 29 to 42 percent of 2005 levels by 2030.
Compared to the fanfare that occurred at signing, the year since the IRA was enacted has been outwardly much quieter — with a recent Washington Post and University of Maryland poll finding that 7 out of 10 Americans had heard little to nothing about the measure since it passed. But, largely behind the scenes, experts say that the Biden administration has been implementing the IRA at a scorching pace.
Experts caution against reaching conclusions after the first year of a plan that is meant to span a decade. But they say there are both achievements worth marking — such as the torrent of private-sector investment the bill spurred and the impact it’s already had on Colorado river conservations — as well as future challenges to stay focused on, specifically whether projects can be permitted quickly enough. All the while, the Biden administration must battle not only a divided-Congress, but public disconnect from the bill.
Popular and legislative support for further climate action will be key to meeting the White House’s goal of an at least 50 percent emissions cut by the end of the decade. Public ambivalence toward the IRA could be a good thing if the bill falters because it may avoid souring Americans on climate policy writ large, says critic Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum and former director of the Congressional Budget Office. However, IRA supporters conversely fear that a lack of public awareness about the impacts of the IRA could make passing future climate legislation more difficult.
For now, the administration’s focus has been on making the IRA a success.
“One doesn’t expect the federal government to move quickly, but they have,” said Ramanan Krishnamoorti, vice president of energy and innovation at the University of Houston. After passing the IRA, he doubted the administration could stand up such a massive piece of legislation in such a short period of time. “I was extremely skeptical that they would actually be where they are today.”
The government has spent much of the last year laying the groundwork for dispersing IRA funding and enacting its tax incentives. That has required the government to both revamp old programs, such as the electric vehicle tax credits, and build entirely new ones. Columbia University and the Environmental Defense Fund have so far logged 150 IRA-related actions that the federal government has taken, ranging from the Environmental Protection Agency awarding climate pollution reduction grants, to the Department of Agriculture opening applications for its rural energy in America program.
“We’ve been thinking about year one as phase one of the IRA,” said Holly Bender, chief energy officer at the Sierra Club. She said the government has had to stand up hundreds of new funding streams, programs and teams within federal agencies. That effort, she said, has been “incredibly successful” and puts the government in a position to “have the money start flowing out the door.”
But Holtz-Eakin doesn’t see the administration’s ability to distribute IRA funding as an inherent measure of effectiveness. “It’s easy to shovel money out the door,” he said. “They’re far from done.”
There have, however, been some more immediate, tangible results of the legislation.
On a pragmatic level, the federal government has been adding staff in order to implement the legislation. This is true at climate-facing entities such as the Department of Energy, but also agencies that are less-often linked to climate policy, including the treasury, which is charged with outlining the rules for the litany of tax incentives that the law called for.
Krishnamoorti also highlighted another overlooked aspect of the IRA: its impact on the Colorado river. The IRA included $4 billion for water management and conservation efforts in the Colorado River Basin, which has already helped states settle long-fought negotiations over how to reduce water use in the river. The agreement reached this May allocated $1.2 billion to cities and irrigation districts in Lower Basin states in exchange for them using less water.
“The agreement that the states came to was in large part because they anticipate this funding coming,” said Krishnamoorti.
But experts agree that perhaps the most pronounced first-year effects of the IRA has been a deluge of investment announcements from the private sector. Just last week, for instance, Maxeon Solar Technologies publicized a $1 billion plan to manufacture solar cells and panels in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Overall, companies have trumpeted more than $86 billion in IRA-related investments since the bill was passed, according to E2, an organization that has been tracking businesses’ response to the legislation. The White House puts that number even higher, at $236 billion of planned investments in the electric vehicle, battery and clean energy sectors, where the commitments have been particularly pronounced.
“The responsiveness of industry to these new incentives and financial support I think demonstrates the depth of the appetite for an American manufacturing renaissance,” said Trevor Higgins, senior vice president at the Center for American Progress think-tank. He was previously a member of Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) staff and helped shape the IRA.
To a certain extent, companies were already moving toward a lower-emissions future, so it’s hard to pinpoint exactly how much of the IRA is driving the investment decisions. But, many businesses and politicians have specifically cited the legislation as motivation. In West Virginia, companies have broken ground at two major battery manufacturing sites.
“These types of investments are exactly what I had in mind when I wrote the IRA,” Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), a key swing-vote on the legislation, said in a statement. He also vowed to “continue to fight the Biden Administration’s unrelenting efforts to manipulate the law to push their radical climate agenda.”
Manchin’s home state of West Virginia is set to see some $1.3 billion in private-sector dollars from the IRA, according to E2 data, and four of the top five states where investments are planned have Republican governors. Supporters of the IRA say that projects in Republican-led states will at least partially insulate the bill from politically motivated rollbacks.
“Any administration that comes in and reverses IRA provisions will lead to a lot of job destruction, primarily in red states,” said Anand Gopal, executive director of policy research at Energy Innovation Policy & Technology, a energy and climate think tank.
Republicans have nonetheless tried to dismantle aspects of the IRA since taking control of the house this year. According to Roll Call, at least four house bills have taken aim at the IRA, especially the EPA’s $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. And until projects are fully funded and physically built, many of the first-year impacts of the IRA remain vulnerable to a shift in political winds.
In some ways, the IRA could also prove to be a victim of its own progress. Bender, with the Sierra Club, says that the sheer number of new programs has been difficult for eligible entities to navigate. There’s a big capacity gap she said, especially for smaller nonprofits or companies.
“It’s [difficult] to find a person who can understand the programs, read the eligibility criteria, check the application dates, and then apply for funding,” she said, adding that the Sierra Club is working with its partners to “make sure that anyone who wants to access IRA programs is able to do so without a huge administrative burden.”
Then there’s the actual, physical building that needs to happen. Once a project is approved for funding or credits, worries shift to whether it will run into regulatory snags such as permitting. Easing that process is an area experts say the administration has not made much headway on in the first year of the IRA.
“The most likely bottleneck going forward is going to be permitting,” said John Coeqyut, the federal policy team director at RMI, a nonprofit working to accelerate the clean energy transition. “We are concerned that not enough will be done to clear the way for the transition.”
John Podesta, who President Biden tapped to lead the administration’s IRA efforts, addressed so-called permitting reform in remarks this May. “We’ve seen some recent wins,” he said, pointing to the Department of Energy’s move toward accelerating electricity transmission line permitting. But he also called on Congress to pass reforms that have been hung up for months.
“This administration is doing all we can with the tools we have,” said Podesta. “But frankly, we could use more tools to go even further and faster.”
As far as getting more legislation passed, the administration is up against both a divided-Congress and limited public awareness about the effects of the IRA. Less than a third of Americans say they’ve heard of the bill since it passed and even President Biden acknowledges that the IRA has thus far failed to grab people’s attention.
“I wish I hadn’t called it that,” he said at a fundraiser in Utah last week. “It has less to do with reducing inflation than it has to do with providing alternatives that generate economic growth.”
Critiques from environmentalists about the bill’s concessions to fossil fuel interests also remain unresolved after year one. There are, for instance, outstanding questions on issues such as hydrogen tax credits, the wording of which could affect the climate-impacts of the IRA because it could encourage investment in fuels that are derived from natural gas versus renewable energy. “That one is taking a little bit more time,” said Gopal. “But I think rightfully so.”
That said, there ishope among advocates that Americans will begin to feel the impacts of the IRA more directly in year two. Perhaps most notably, the Department of Energy has issued guidance for a range of home energy rebates that states are expected to begin dolling out over the coming year.
“These rebate programs are really important because they are a way for low and moderate income households to be part of this transition,” said Ari Matusiak, the CEO of Rewiring America, an electrification nonprofit. “We want to make sure those programs are being stood up and well utilized by the people who can most benefit from them.”
The ultimate test of the IRA, though, will be how quickly and how deeply it reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Holtz-Eakin says he’ll be watching the Energy Information Administration’s annual release of data as a gauge for the amount of renewable energy being brought to homes and businesses across the country. “If that hasn’t moved by year three, the advocates are going to start getting nervous,” he said. “How quickly can you move the needle, and as a result retain the support you have.”
Anand Gopal, with the Energy Innovation Policy & Technology, says the IRA remains on track to meet his organization’s projection that the bill will cut emissions by 37 to 41 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Nothing in the first year of the IRA, he says, has changed that trend toward a cleaner energy future.
Former Congressman Bob Inglis (R-SC) was once a climate change skeptic and is now a champion of climate solutions. To him, whether the IRA gets credit for the transition or not doesn’t detract from the progress it will likely lead to.
“When people start seeing it roll out in projects, they won’t know that it came from the IRA,” Inglis said. “[But] the IRA is going to deploy a lot of wind and solar and that’s an accomplishment that people are going to look back and be proud of.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Biden’s landmark climate law turns one today. Here’s what you missed. on Aug 16, 2023.
This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Tik Root.
Moderate Tories fear the party’s attack on human rights will alienate many voters and damage the UK’s global standing
The Conservatives risk being seen once again as the “nasty party” by trying to win votes with a divisive attack on human rights, senior party figures have warned.
Rishi Sunak is under increasing pressure from his party this weekend over his pledge to stop the boats crossing the Channel. It follows another week that ended in Channel deaths after the capsizing of a boat, while the total number of people making the dangerous crossing since 2018 rose above the 100,000 mark.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
On 4 November 2016, the Daily Mail’s front page was wholly devoted to a screaming attack on the three judges who had ruled that parliament had to pass an act of parliament before the UK could lawfully leave the European Union. The “enemies of the people”, who included, the Mail yelled, an “openly gay ex-Olympic fencer”, were accused of defying 17.4 million Brexit voters.
That was the beginning.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Rightwingers want a nasty debate about the European convention on human rights to revive nativist passions
The drumbeats get louder as the call of the wild pulses through the blood of the Conservative party again. The front page of the Telegraph on Thursday splashes, “Cabinet call on PM to ditch ECHR”. On their headcount, a third of the British cabinet want to join Russia and Belarus as pariah states outside the European convention on human rights.
Downing Street says no, but others report the prime minister wavering. This is exactly how Brexit happened – and that’s the spirit the Braverman tendency hopes to reprise, with all the nativism, the xenophobia, the British “sovereignty” phantasm and even talk of another referendum, which could slice the country into two broken halves. They imagine this could save their party, or at least their own seats, at the next election.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
The Tory deputy chair used demeaning and disgusting language in his remarks about asylum seekers, says Alexandra Wright. Plus letters from Kevin Potter and Will King
A week after the devastating fire that consumed Grenfell Tower in June 2017, I joined a march of silence from the library in Ladbroke Grove to Grenfell Tower.
Nothing prepared me as I raised my eyes to look at the terrible and shocking black shell of the tower, as though transplanted from hell’s own landscape – an unsightly and menacing frame, a blind, burnt, blackened towering box, its empty glassless windows a shocking indictment of negligence and all that is morally ugly in our society.
The upcoming 2023 Constitutional Referendum on enshrining a First Nations Voice in the Australian constitution seeks a change to a document drafted by white male colonial politicians through a series of constitutional conventions in the 1890s. What in many ways is an inspired amendment to a document stranded in antiquated notions of white Australia and colonial privilege has become something other — a free-for-all about a document few have read and fewer understand.
This scrapping about a document shrouded in ignorance, easy to misrepresent and a source of such confusion and partisan mischief-making is one of the many reasons my colleague James Blackwell and I developed an 8-part podcast series, It’s not just the vibe, It’s the Constitution to help people understand what our Constitution actually has in it – and why we are being asked to change it.
In all of this, history is important and perhaps none more seminal and enlightening than the struggle women’s voices have had to be heard as they move from the constitutional fringes of our governance to something more approaching a mainstream consensus, although still with a long way to go.
At the time of drafting the Constitution there were many absent voices — female and indigenous voices led a long line of exclusions and with telling results.
They were unrepresented as delegates in the 1890s Constitutional Conventions and their voices and votes largely didn’t count when the colonies bounded together into what we now call the Commonwealth of Australia.
There was a spark of inspiration in South Australia where by 1894 women had successfully campaigned for the right to vote and to be members of the Parliament. This left an imprint on the Australian Constitution as the drafters scrambled to fit the anomaly of female suffrage in one state into a document covering a unified nation.
Women outside of South Australia, of course, wanted the vote and went to great lengths to get it. In Victoria in 1891 they gathered the Monster Petition, 260 metres in length with 30,000 signatures and the largest known petition of the 19th Century. It petitioned for a women’s vote but they were unsuccessful and women didn’t get to vote in Victorian elections until 1908.
Jumping back across the border, female suffrage in South Australia provided the legislative opening for the remarkable Catherine Helen Spence to run as the first women federal political candidate in Australia. Nominating to be a member of the 1897 Constitutional Convention drafting the Constitution held in her hometown of Adelaide, she was identified as one of the ten best ‘men’ in the running. The accolade was not enough to get her elected although her legacy of active citizenship paved the way for those following in her footsteps. And, hugely significant, women voting in South Australia were able to convince their representatives to guarantee women who had the vote that their vote would continue — Section 41 figures in the Constitution as a result.
There are residues of South Australian female suffrage too in Section 128 which sets out the machinery for changing the Constitution. We are hearing a lot about this section in the run up to the Voice Referendum. The proposed change must be approved by a ‘double majority’. There needs to be a majority of voters in favour of change throughout Australia (and voters in the ACT and NT have only been counted since 1977 and, a majority of electors in a majority of the states (i.e. at least four out of six states have to vote yes — the territories don’t count in that part).
Portrait of Catherine Helen Spence in the 1890s. Picture: Public domain/Wikimedia Commons
The wording of that section also uncovers the struggle for suffrage by women in the 1890s. The framers realised that in those states where women did have the right to vote — votes guaranteed to continue by section 41 — those states would garner more votes and that might skew the result. Wouldn’t that be unfair to those states that had not yet given women the right to vote?
At this point the convention debates record a bizarre discussion about whether women should put their votes in on pink ballot forms and men in blue! In the end, they determined another way, as seen in the words of the third paragraph of section 128. Until universal suffrage was achieved, ‘only one-half the electors voting for and against the proposed law shall be counted in any State in which adult suffrage prevails.’
As it turned out, this protection was never used because the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 granted Australian women the right to vote and to stand in federal elections, and the first referendum was held in 1906. But the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 also specifically disqualified ‘natives of Australia, Asia, Africa and the Pacific Islands (except New Zealand Māori)’ from voting in federal elections, unless they were entitled under section 41 of the constitution. It was not until 1962 that Indigenous Australians were included in the Commonwealth Electoral Act and included as voters in Australian federal elections.
Growing knowledge of indigenous exclusion and the constitutional forms it has taken may help clarify the importance of the “yes” case without overblowing its claims. The exclusion of indigenous Australians and the history of discrimination against them is certainly relevant to this year’s proposed change to the Constitution.
The proposed section 129 of the Constitution, will recognise ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia’, and set up ‘a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice’; which will ‘may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’. The section also guarantees that ‘Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws’ about the ‘composition, functions, powers and procedures’ of the Voice.
In all this, knowing what is in the Constitution, and the history behind it, is key to understanding this year’s referendum. In order to change something, you really need to know what is in it in the first place. And in knowing something about the constitution and its history, you may unearth inspirational stories of what others have done before you and what is at stake. For example, people voting in this year’s referendum may well be inspired by the women of the 1890s and there unremitting struggle for female suffrage. They are an edifying example of the importance of active citizenship.
With that I encourage you to tune into our 8-part podcast series, It’s not just the vibe, It’s the Constitution available on all podcast platforms to help and inspire you when you come to vote in this year’s referendum!
The post Referendum vote: Women from history can help us appeared first on BroadAgenda.
As first 15 people move on to Bibby Stockholm, lawyers say they are intervening to halt transfer of dozens more
People seeking refuge who were ordered to live on a controversial giant barge have been reprieved after legal challenges claimed the vessel was unsafe and unsuitable for traumatised people.
As the first tranche of 15 people were moved on to the Bibby Stockholm in Portland, Dorset, lawyers say they are intervening to halt the transfer of dozens more on to the 220-bedroom vessel.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
In India, recognition of the role of gender identities in preservation of human rights, both in the context of judicial interpretation and cultural acceptance, began to gain significance since the verdict of NALSA v. Union of India came out in 2014. However, India falls short in addressing the emerging intersectional tangents in the arena of human rights. Even though disability rights began to gain recognition internationally as early as in 1975, The Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights And Full Participation) Act was passed in India in 1995. Several critiques cropped up against the Act, regarding the insufficient legal protection associated with, inter alia, public employment and the non-inclusion of specific rights to women with disabilities. However, the amended version of the same Act came into effect, after a delayed period of about 21 years, in the year 2016, with the title Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act.
Gender and disability were not considered as interconnected to each other until the culmination of the Mexico Report in the first World Conference of the International Women’s Year, 1975 (Bantekas, Stein and Anastasiou, 2018). Eventually, this conceptualization influenced the formulation of the United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) which, in turn, formed the foundational basis for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act of 2016 in India. However, what we need to understand here is that gender is not limited to a binary connotation (Bantekas, Stein and Anastasiou, 2018).
World Health Organisation emphasizes that gender is shaped through cultural intervention and sex is a biological phenomenon limited to the natural laws (WHO). This has led to recognising gender as isolated from the confined parameters of sex. Some individuals who do not feel that their gender is aligned with their sex often experience distress and trauma while coming to terms with this reality (Buckwalter, 2017). There has been much debate on identifying gender dysphoria as a disability under the American Disabilities Act of 1990 but this move is still under contention (Levy and Barry, 2021). There have been similar discussions and contemplations in other places such as in Australia (Bell, 2015), Japan and China (Blom, 2016) with regards to the intersection of disability rights and gender inclusion. India has a long way to go.
The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 (RPWD) rightfully highlights ‘women and children with disabilities’ as a special class of disabled individuals requiring additional protection, but there is absence of any special provision signifying the need for addressing disability rights of persons who identify as genderqueer, transgender or intersex. They are regularly subjected to aggravated discrimination and violence (UCLA, 2021). Moreover, only the two prevalent sexes – male and female – have been identified by the Government of India for disability census (NSO, 2021). With the intersection of disability, gender non-conforming disabled people become one of the most vulnerable groups in Indian society. RPWD has followed the United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which also address the intersection of gender and disability rights in the context of the two conventionally recognised genders: Men and Women. Therefore, the exclusion of a gender inclusive provision or terminology in RPWD seems to have a basis. .
However, as has been emphasised in the Act and the Convention, the responsibility to come out with effective legislation for preventing discrimination against all kinds of persons with disabilities vests with the State. The State has the duty to ensure a holistic implementation of the objective of the rules and regulations laid down in CRPD. Supreme Court cases of Rajive Raturi v. Union of India (2017) and Disabled Rights Group v. Union of India (2017) have rightfully highlighted the above-mentioned observation. This is where the Indian Government’s legislative conundrums come to the forefront.
One of the most problematic and flawed legislation of India finds its recognition in the provisions of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019. The Act provides erroneous definitions of the term, ‘transgender’, forming the very basis of the legislation. The definition of the term ‘transgender’ under section 2(k) of the Act defines transgender persons as not only those individuals who do not identify with the biological sex assigned at birth but also individuals with ‘intersex variations’. Individuals who identify as transgender are those who do not feel their sex is aligned with their gender but individuals with intersex variations are born with “a reproductive or sexual anatomy which doesn’t seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male”. (Koopman, 2017). As discussed earlier, WHO’s premise of treating sex as the biological phenomenon and gender as the cultural one can be seen to have a distorted implementation in this legislation as it treats sex and gender under the same umbrella. Transgender people cannot be defined to have intersex variations as a matter of fact, but they may also have such variations. Furthermore, Section 15 of the Act, which specifically highlights the government’s responsibilities in provision of adequate health services to transgender individuals, does not cover provisions to transgender people with disabilities.
Apart from this, even though the Indian Domestic Violence Act of 2005 recognizes intimate partner violence against women, it categorically excludes similar instances of family and partner violence in cases of other individuals belonging to the LGBTQ+ community. Such individuals are, quite frequently, subjected to acts of violence by their partners and other family members. Furthermore, there are no provisions specifically addressing disability rights in the context of intimate partner violence even though that has been considered as an integral arena of concern in the field of disability rights (Smith, 2008).
The existing laws and policies surrounding disability rights in India are not equipped to deal with instances of violation of such rights in cases of individuals belonging to the LGBTQ+ communities. As highlighted earlier, the very legislative definition of the term ‘transgender’ in India is flawed. None of the above-mentioned legislation includes any provision holistically addressing the intersection of gender inclusivity and disability rights. The current legal scenario of this intersectional parameter seems to be lacking substantially in India. In a very recent and landmark judgment of Patan Jamal Vali v. State of Andhra Pradesh (2021), Justice D.Y Chandrachud, even though he emphasized the need for addressing intersectional parameters, in the context of women with disabilities, his observations apply to all. Every individual of any gender, with any kind of recognised disability, are entitled to special protection by the State for reasons stated above.
Bantekas, I., Stein, M. and Anastasiou, D., 2018. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. 1st ed. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, pp.172-173.
Bell, F., 2015. Children with Gender Dysphoria and the Jurisdiction of the Family Court. University of Wallongong Law Journal, 32(2), pp. 426-454.
Blom, R. M., 2016. Body integrity identity disorder crosses culture:. Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, p. 1419 to 1423.
Levi, J. and Barry, K., 2022. Embracing the ADA: Transgender People and Disability Rights. [online] Blog.harvardlawreview.org. Available at: <https://blog.harvardlawreview.org/embracing-the-ada-transgender-people-and-disability-rights/> [Accessed 24 July 2022].
Koopman, S., 2022. Intersex vs Transgender: Here’s What You Need To Know. [online] HuffPost UK. Available at: <https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2017/02/08/intersex-vs-transgender-heres-what-you-need-to-know_a_21709480/> [Accessed 24 July 2022].
Liang, T. 2017. An Analysis of Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble. London: Macat International Ltd.
Ministry of Statistics and Program Implementation, Government of India, National Statistics Office. (2021) Persons with Disabilities (Divyangjan) in India – A Statistical Profile: 2021.
Pacific Standard. 2022. When Disability Rights Are Trans Rights. [online] Available at: <https://psmag.com/social-justice/next-frontier-fight-for-trans-rights> [Accessed 24 July 2022].
Smith, D., 2007. Disability, Gender, and Intimate Partner Violence: Relationships from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Sexuality and Disability, 26(1), pp.15-28.
WHO, n.d. Gender and Health. [Online]
Available at: https://www.who.int/health-topics/gender#tab=tab_1
Williams Institute. 2022. Transgender people over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime. [online] Available at: <https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/ncvs-trans-press-release/> [Accessed 24 July 2022].
This post was originally published on LSE Human Rights.
Janine Jackson interviewed the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies‘ Melissa Crow about the Biden administration’s asylum restrictions for the July 28, 2023, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
CBS News (7/26/23)
Janine Jackson: A typical headline, this one from CBS News, reads, “Judge Rejects US Asylum Restrictions, Jeopardizing Biden Policy Aimed at Deterring Illegal Border Crossings.” So something is “jeopardized” that was aimed at “deterring” something “illegal.” CBS Morning News announced that a federal judge
blocked a new Biden administration policy aimed at reducing illegal crossings at the US/Mexico border. The policy took effect in May and it seemed to be working. In June, the number of crossings plummeted.
Whether the goal is “deterring” or “reducing” may shift your vision a bit of what a policy “working” entails, though the unexamined nature of the word “illegal” remains constant.
And CNN echoed many others in labeling the ruling, most importantly, a “major blow” to the Biden administration.
What does the ruling from a California Northern District Court say, and what lives—besides Biden’s political one—are at stake? We’re joined now by Melissa Crow, director of litigation at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Melissa Crow.
Melissa Crow: Thanks so much, Janine.
JJ: What policy is it that the district court judge ruled unlawful, and where did that policy come from?
MC: It is a rule promulgated by the Biden administration that is inaccurately termed “Circumvention of Lawful Pathways.” The rule essentially makes people ineligible for asylum if they transited through a third country on their way to the United States, unless they did one of three things: They applied for and were denied protection in a country of transit; unless they applied for and obtained parole under a certain DHS-designated program; or unless they obtained an appointment through the CBP One mobile app to present at a port of entry at a particular time.
There are some very narrow exceptions, but they generally don’t apply in practice.
US District Court Judge Jon S. Tigar
JJ: So District Court Judge [Jon] Tigar ruled that that was unlawful, and on what grounds did he make that ruling?
MC: On three separate grounds. First, the judge found that the rule is contrary to law, for pretty much the same reason that both the District Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that prior Trump-era restrictions that were very similar were also illegal.
The Immigration and Nationality Act provides that anyone who enters the United States, regardless of their immigration status and regardless of their manner of entry, should be able to apply for asylum. This rule flies in the face of that protection.
The second ground is that the rule is arbitrary and capricious. Essentially, Judge Tigar saw through the government’s smokescreen of all of these so-called lawful pathways, and he himself in the decision noted a number of situations where people wouldn’t be eligible for any of the alleged pathways that the rule supposedly provides.
And then the CBP One appointment requirement, it is just a condition that the Immigration and Nationality Act doesn’t include, and Congress never envisioned this kind of a barrier to applying for asylum in the US.
The third basis on which the judge found it to be illegal is that the government failed to comply with the required notice and comment procedures under the Administrative Procedure Act. They only provided 30 days for comment, as opposed to the usual 60 days.
And it’s a really complicated rule. I can vouch for the fact that many advocates didn’t sleep much during those 30 days, and certainly would’ve done an even more comprehensive job in commenting on the flaws in the rule if they’d had more time.
JJ: That’s very interesting. It’s almost as though it was kind of being pushed through.
CNN said, without elaboration, “Administration officials have rejected the comparison to Trump-era rules.” That’s true as a sentence; they have rejected those comparisons. But it sounds like, hmm, that doesn’t necessarily square with reality. There is a lot of similarity here.
MC: There is absolutely a lot of similarity. We’ve referred to it in the past as a mashup of the Trump-era entry ban and transit ban on asylum.
JJ: Let me just ask you, it sounds like you’ve answered it, but maybe just to tease it out: The phrase “illegal crossing” appears in every story. We’re trying to deter, we’re trying to reduce, we’re trying to curb “illegal crossings.” Is that a useful phrase?
Melissa Crow: “It doesn’t matter if you come in at a port of entry or between ports of entry, you are still entitled to apply for asylum in this country.”
MC: It is not a useful phrase. As I said, Section 1158 of the Immigration and Nationality Act provides a right to apply for asylum, regardless of an individual’s manner of entry. And that is why the initial Trump-era entry ban, and the entry ban implicit in this rule, are in violation of law. It doesn’t matter if you come in at a port of entry or between ports of entry, you are still entitled to apply for asylum in this country.
JJ: I wonder where Texas Republican Congressman Tony Gonzales got the factoid that he tossed off on Face the Nation, saying that, “Right now, nine out of ten people that come over illegally do not qualify for asylum.”
In context, he was saying that Texas troopers pushing children back into the Rio Grande is very terrible, but in general, attention there is sort of barking up the wrong tree, and we really ought to be talking about something else. But where does he get that nine out of ten number?
MC: I honestly don’t know where he gets that nine out of ten number. I’d be very curious to know. And I would emphasize that the asylum process is supposed to be based on case-by-case adjudication. So either an asylum office or an immigration judge would need to listen to the facts of the case of any of those children, or anyone else who’s seeking asylum in this country, before they can decide if the claim is meritorious.
JJ: Reporting evinces nowadays an implicit acceptance of the goal of border management, keeping things “under control,” keeping immigrants’ efforts to enter from “surging.” The way we’re to understand that the US is doing things right is if there are just fewer people trying to enter. It seems that a goal that we didn’t necessarily buy into is now implicitly in the background of everything we read and hear.
MC: That is not what the Immigration and Nationality Act says, and we seem to be prioritizing efficiency over the law, quite frankly.
JJ: You have suggested that instead of defending this policy, and it looks like the administration is going to appeal this ruling, the administration should instead be taking steps towards a fair and humane process. What would be some of the key elements of that fair and humane asylum process?
MC: It should of course be premised on case-by-case adjudication, as we just discussed, but it has to comply with the law. People have to be able to access the asylum process, regardless of manner of entry, regardless of status.
And one thing that I would note is that we know that the Department of Homeland Security can reallocate resources when they need to. We saw it in the family detention context—which was also illegal, I would argue. But we saw facilities where the government housed families pop up almost overnight.
We see it when they send more asylum officers to the border, or more immigration judges are assigned to hear border cases. Customs and Border Protection is one of the most well-resourced law enforcement agencies in the country. And if they want to process more asylum seekers at the border, they absolutely have the ability and the capacity to do that.
So I think a critical piece of good border policy has to be reallocation of resources in a way that enables them to comply with the law.
JJ: We’ve been speaking with Melissa Crow, director of litigation at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies. Thank you so much, Melissa Crow, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
MC: Thanks so much for your interest in these critical issues.
The post ‘People Have to Be Able to Access the Asylum Process, Regardless of Manner of Entry’ appeared first on FAIR.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
Court rules all potential victims must be assessed for support, after policy disqualified people with criminal convictions
A high court judge has ordered the home secretary to change a key part of a trafficking policy introduced just months ago.
In an urgent hearing on Wednesday, lawyers representing trafficking victims said they were at risk of human rights violations such as slavery, servitude and forced labour if the policy continued.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Radio Free Asia spoke with former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans on Wednesday, ahead of Sunday’s parliamentary election in Cambodia.
Evans is the architect of the 1991 Paris Peace Accord, which ended war in Cambodia and promised democratic freedoms and human rights. It led to the 1993 U.N.-sponsored election that was contested by multiple political parties.
Thirty years later, Prime Minister Hun Sen’s relentless campaign to co-opt dissenting voices and effectively ban the main opposition Candlelight Party from participating in this year’s vote has been a “shameless, disgraceful, indefensible” development, Evans said.
The response from the international community should lie in applying serious, systematic targeted sanctions against current Cambodian leaders and ruling elites, he said. As for opposition activists, Evans suggests to “keep the flame alive and wait for the times and circumstances to change.”
RFA: Cambodia will have an election next Sunday. And as you know, just a few weeks before the election, Hun Sen amended the election law banning those who fail to cast their ballot from running for office in the future. We want to hear your view on that.
Gareth Evans: Well, obviously, the recent electoral law changes are shameless, disgraceful, indefensible. It’s obviously designed to avoid any opportunity for a boycott. Not that boycotts have been very successful in the past, but it’s entirely consistent with the increasingly autocratic character of the Hun Sen regime.
We’ve seen this. We’ve seen this play out so many times before in so many different ways. This is just the latest version of it, a complete crackdown on anything resembling decency, anything resembling decent democracy. It’s a very, very unhappy development, but something that I’m afraid we’ve become used to.
RFA: Even though there are 18 political parties contesting the election, the main, credible opposition party, the Candlelight Party, has been banned by the National Election Committee, saying that it had failed to provide an original registration document. But as you know, this is an attempt from Prime Minister Hun Sen’s party, the CPP, to eliminate any possible opposition party in the election.
Gareth Evans: Yes, we’ve seen this play before with the banning of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (in 2017). We’ve seen it with the criminal proceedings against Sam Rainsy. We’ve seen it with the criminal proceedings against Kem Sokha, and we’ve seen it now, of course, with the banning of the Candlelight Party.
So, although notionally we have, as you say, a lot of small parties still contesting the election, the reality is that the only serious opposition to the CPP was the major parties of the major players, the major spokesmen, and they have been completely suppressed now by these measures.
Again, I say with the rest of the world, this is shameless. This is disgraceful. This is indefensible. And it’s just a fundamental assault on democracy. And I can’t understand anyone who cannot be very, very unhappy about that, particularly given the whole history of Cambodia and the efforts that we went to at the time of the peace settlement, the Paris Peace Accords, to entrench democracy and human rights in the Cambodian constitution and the Cambodian system. So it’s unfortunately been a very unhappy story ever since.
RFA: Even though this is an unhappy story, Hun Sen survives all the time. He lost the 1993 election. He managed to hold onto power as the second prime minister, and then he conducted a coup (in 1997) and chased out the first prime minister.
As you know, five years ago he banned the CNRP from contesting the election. He won that election. The whole world refused to accept the election result as soon as the result was announced. But then the world has to work with him. Is it enough for the international community just to not accept the result of this sham election?
Gareth Evans: No. I think the international community has to do more. In fact, when I think back on it, I mean, the real trouble started back in 1993 with that first election result, which was a demonstration of how much the Cambodian people really wanted democracy, really wanted to have a say in how they governed.
But of course, Hun Sen refused to accept the election result then. We went along with his objections and allowed him to become the second prime minister. And the rest is history. So we’ve performed very badly as an international community all these years.
And I think the solution is not in the multilateral organizations. I mean, people talk about reconvening the Paris International Conference and somehow, you know, getting the terms of the agreement re-enforced. But the most that could happen if that were to take place, would be simply to refer the issue back to the competent UN organs, back to the Human Rights Council. So we would just go around and around in circles, as you say, making occasional statements, occasional resolutions of international bodies, but nothing really happening.
So, I think the solution lies essentially with individual countries, not so much the multilateral intergovernmental organizations, not the UN itself, not the Human Rights Council. I think it depends on individual countries applying quite serious sanctions.
RFA: What would be your advice to opposition leaders and to the Cambodian people in general? How much longer can they continue to fight? And what would be your advice so that the effort can be sustainable?
Gareth Evans: Well, of course, that’s the situation at the moment. It’s very bleak, It’s very desolate and it’s very dangerous for opponents of the regime internally. And it’s difficult for me sitting comfortably in Australia to be telling, you know, people who are unhappy with the situation in Cambodia what to do.
But all I can say is you just have to keep that flame alive. You have to keep that flame burning and wait for the times and circumstances to change. I don’t believe there is anything in the Cambodian water that is hostile to democracy, that’s in favor of authoritarianism, that’s in favor of paternalism.
I saw for myself in 1993 how badly how badly the people of Cambodia wanted a say in their own government, wanted a return to normality and decency. That spirit is there, and it just has to be quietly nurtured, supported by overseas countries like Australia and the United States, helping at the margins.
Optimism is self-reinforcing. Pessimism is very self-defeating. And unless you believe the change can happen and will happen over time, then the change is never going to happen. You just have to go on believing in it and staying committed. And I know there are a great many decent Cambodians doing just that at the moment, and I wish them every possible success.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Huot Vuthy and Sam Poly for Radio Free Asia.
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This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.
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Kuchu Times was founded eight years ago to give voice to Uganda’s LGBTQ+ community. Now, a new anti-homosexuality law is threatening this mission at a time when LGBTQ+ Ugandans are facing beatings and evictions.
“People will tell us their stories and ask us not to put them out there, not until it is safer,” Kuchu Times deputy director, Ruth Muganzi, told CPJ. “We are meant to ensure LGBTI voices are heard but we are gagged. This is the pain we suffer since the law was passed.”
Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act, enacted in May, punishes consensual same-sex relations with life imprisonment, entrenching restrictions in a 1950 penal code. Those convicted of “aggravated homosexuality” for same-sex relations with minors, the elderly, or the disabled, face the death penalty. There are reports that the law has sparked “increased vigilantism” against LGBTQ+ Ugandans, and that some have been forced into exile or hiding.
Kuchu Times still posts on its website. But its annual magazine, Bombastic, is on hold in part because the team is grappling with how to print a publication that mostly features personal accounts without endangering sources.
The law has potential ramifications for the press beyond issues with sourcing. Anyone convicted of printing, broadcasting, or distributing material “promoting or encouraging homosexuality” could be imprisoned for 20 years. Free speech advocates fear that this provision poses a risk to the media.
“This law, in so many ways, is an anti-publication law. The broad terms in which it talks about promoting homosexuality can be interpreted to mean anything,” said Nicholas Opiyo, a human rights activist and one of the lawyers in a petition challenging the law’s constitutionality. “Covering a story that depicts the community in a positive light could be interpreted to mean promoting homosexuality.”
Companies found to be promoting homosexuality face license revocations or fines of up to one billion Ugandan shillings (US$269,000). It is a financial penalty akin to “strangulation,” said Robert Ssempala, executive director of Human Rights Network for Journalists-Uganda, a press rights group.
For Kuchu Times, which derives its name from the slang that queer Ugandans use to identify themselves, the implications of these provisions are clear — and grave. But there are signs that the law may have a chilling effect on news organizations that don’t solely focus on the LGBTQ+ community, too.
CPJ interviewed 13 journalists about the new law. Most requested anonymity, fearing professional and social repercussions of talking about a law they perceive to have popular support, including within the media industry. Nine told CPJ that while they have not cut back their reporting, and their newsrooms still cover the LGBTQ+ community, the law is affecting the way they work.
Two Ugandan reporters contributing to international media say that they’ve had trouble finding LGBTQ+ Ugandans to interview about the law’s impact on access to HIV treatment, and about incidents of persecution. A third journalist has decided to forgo a byline on some LGBTQ+ coverage “out of an abundance of caution.” A newspaper editor and a television reporter told CPJ that company lawyers have been brought into editorial discussions to advise on what copy might breach the law.
“Are you promoting homosexuality if you give a story about a gay person a lot of space in your paper? Or are you just reporting? Should you give these stories lower prominence?” the newspaper editor said. “It is a thin line; journalists might not know where it is until they’ve crossed it.”
Fox Odoi-Oyweloyo, a ruling party politician who voted against the law and is now petitioning against it in court, told CPJ that he recently declined four broadcast interview invitations after journalists called in advance and asked him to tone down his views once on air. Ssempala said that in two instances, broadcast journalists warned him not to “go there” when he broached the law’s press freedom implications.
Three of the journalists who spoke to CPJ also expressed concern that given Uganda’s spotty press freedom record, which includes physical attacks on journalists, arrests, and the use of criminal libel charges against the press, the law might be used as a pretext to target critical media.
“It is a trap that you eventually walk into. You might be punished not because anyone is necessarily outraged because you interviewed an LGBTQ person, but because they are unhappy with your [other] coverage,” said Lydia Namubiru, news editor of the Pan-African weekly e-paper, The Continent.
Authorities in Uganda have previously sanctioned the media for its coverage of LGBTQ+ issues. In 2004, regulators fined a radio station US$1,000 for depicting homosexuality as an “acceptable way of life” and in 2007, a radio show host was suspended after interviewing a lesbian activist. Bombastic has also faced threats.
“History has shown us it has happened. It is not inconceivable that the same will happen again,” said Opiyo.
Namubiru told CPJ she also worries that the media will “not grow better” at reporting on the LGBTQ+ community while the law makes it difficult or dangerous to publish their voices.
Ugandan media have a record of homophobic, even inflammatory, coverage of the LGBTQ+ community. In 2010, a now-defunct newspaper called for the hanging of homosexuals. One of those named in the publication, gay rights activist David Kato, was bludgeoned to death a few months later. In 2014 the Red Pepper tabloid exposed the names of people it called the “200 top homos.”
In court filings responding to petitions challenging the law, Uganda’s attorney general Kiryowa Kiwanuka said the law does not infringe on human rights, including freedom of expression. The attorney general said that the law is “intended to protect the traditional family” and is “unambiguous and purposeful.”
Some journalists share similar opinions. A broadcast reporter based in eastern Uganda feels empowered to investigate sexual crimes by a section of the law requiring the public to report “reasonable suspicion” of the “offense of homosexuality,” the reporter told CPJ.
CPJ’s emails to the office of Attorney General Kiwanuka were unanswered. CPJ called Asuman Basalirwa, the opposition legislator who authored the law, and sent requests for comment via his parliamentary email address and text message but did not receive any replies.
Other African journalists may also soon face freedom of expression concerns surrounding anti-LGBTQ+ laws. Ghana is considering a law which carries the potential for censorship. In Kenya, one lawmaker has called for a ban on “any discussions, publications and spread of news on same-sex relationships” while another has drafted a law similar to Uganda’s. Cameroon’s media regulator has threatened to suspend programs “promoting homosexual practices.”
As Ugandans wait on the courts to decide the constitutionality of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, Muganzi remains defiant. This law, she said, is just another battle for the country’s LGBTQ+ community and Kuchu Times will not stay away from the frontlines.
“We must keep speaking up so that Ugandans have a wider picture of LGBTI people. We must keep saying: We are not a myth. We are not an import of the West. We are your friends, your neighbors, your brothers, and your sisters,” she said. “As a lesbian woman, I do not have the privilege to remain afraid and silent.”
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Muthoki Mumo.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
March 7-8 (2023) protests in Tbilisi marked one of the milestones in Georgia’s recent history. Chanting “No to Russian Law,” tens of thousands of Georgians took to the streets in Tbilisi to stand and act against the first-reading adoption of the draft law on “Transparency of Foreign Influence,” which mirrored its Russian counterpart, intending to shrink space for civil society and jeopardise democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
Backed by the ruling Georgian Dream party, the draft law required civil society organisations and media, that received more than 20% of their funds (financial or in-kind support) from abroad, to register as “Foreign Agents” with the Ministry of Justice. Full of vague concepts and insufficiently defined terms, the draft law imposed fines up to 25,000 Georgian Lari (around 9, 800 USD) in the event of non-compliance with its terms (Human Rights Watch, 2023; Parulava, 2023). The initiators of the draft law, which was adopted in first reading, also registered another version of the bill on “Registration of Foreign Agents,” extending its scope to individuals and increasing its penalties up to 5 years of imprisonment. Even though the initiators and government attempted to deceive the public into believing that the sole goal of both bills was to ensure transparency of funds, it soon became evident that the proposed draft laws tacitly aimed to impose control and undue restrictions on independent groups that are at the forefront of securing human rights, democracy and the rule of law in the country.
Protesters in Tbilisi holding up the flags of Georgia and the EU | Photo by Ilia Samurganidi
The event sparked a large-scale wave of protests throughout Georgia, especially in the country’s capital. United against the oppressive law, demonstrators showed the highest degree of resistance, unity, coordination and self-organisation, which eventually paid off. Even though the government attempted to disperse protesters with riot police, tear gas and water cannons, the crowd proved to be extremely resilient. Following 2 days of non-stop mass protests, the parliament was pressured to schedule an extraordinary session, where the government voted down the draft law on “Transparency of Foreign Influence” (Kincha, 2023). In addition, the second bill on “Registration of Foreign Agents” was withdrawn.
The first-reading adoption of the draft law on “Transparency of Foreign Influence” has prompted not only internal but also strong external condemnation. The United Nations in Georgia (2023) expressed “profound concern,” stating that civil society organisations in the country have been taking a leading role in protecting human rights and supporting the most vulnerable communities. A high representative of the EU stressed the incompatibility of the draft law with EU values and added that its final enactment would have “serious repercussions” on EU-Georgia relations (EEAS Press Team, 2023). In her open letter, the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe , Dunja Mijatović, pointed to the detrimental consequences of the proposed draft law on freedom of expression and association and urged the parliament to withdraw the law.
The case law within the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) affirm that the “Foreign Agents” law conflicts with fundamental human rights. In the case of Ecodefence and Others v. Russia (2022), the ECHR found Russian law on “Foreign Agents,” which closely resembled the Georgian bills (1,2), in violation of Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, protecting freedom of assembly and association. The Court noted that the law is neither justified nor necessary in a democratic society, placing a “chilling effect” on the activities of civil society organisations (Eco Defence and Others v. Russia, 2022, para. 186). In the same vein, in the case of European Commission v. Hungary (2020), the CJEU held that the Hungarian law on the “Transparency of Organisations Receiving Foreign Funds” was contrary to the right to private life, protection of personal data and freedom of assembly and association. As a result, the Hungarian government was compelled to repeal the law (Hungary Today, 2021).
Russia adopted its first “Foreign Agents” law in 2012, which took a toll on civil society organisations. By 2016, the government had designated 148 organisations as “Foreign Agents,” 27 of which, mostly those whose scope of work was centered on human rights, eventually ceased to exist (Amnesty International, 2016). Subsequent amendments widened the application of the law from registered civil society organisations to media, individuals and associations. In 2022, a new law entered into force that radically expanded Russia’s oppressive “Foreign Agents” legislation to virtually any entity or individual who, under “foreign influence,” pursues civil activism or is critical of Russian policies (Human Rights Watch, 2022). In the face of such an immensely hostile environment, many civil society organisations were shut down. In 2021 alone, 1,500 human rights defenders, activists and journalists fled the country (North Realities, 2021).
Since the proposed Foreign Agents draft laws in Georgia echoed the spirit of the Russian laws, one could reasonably assume that Georgian civil society and the human rights situation in the country would have been subjected to the same oppressive, dictatorial and authoritarian rule as they are in Russia, should the Georgian government have not faced unbreakable public backlash.
March 7-8 (2023) protests in Georgia demonstrate that governments with authoritative tendencies often underestimate the power which lies with people when human rights and democratic values are endangered. The event has proved that the utilisation of the right to protest, which closely intersects with freedom of assembly, freedom of association and freedom of speech, is an indispensable tool to expose injustice, attract public support, generate and sustain political pressure and ultimately influence power structures’ decision-making processes. The resistance, high level of self-organisation and scale of the protests compelled the government of Georgia to realise that civil society forms the very foundation of a public domain and participatory governance.
In spite of the failure of the Georgian government to silence civil society, the hostile environment in the country towards civil society organisations, human rights defenders, media and activists is a systemic issue that cannot be eradicated with a single case of success. The proposal and/or enactment of Russian-styled oppressive laws is an extremely dangerous trend that requires high levels of scrutiny, vigilance and coordination from civil society and the larger public. This is particularly vital now, as Georgia is at the critical stage of its euro integration process – with 81% of Georgia’s population willing to join the EU (National Democracy Initiative, 2023), Georgia is expected to fulfill the recommendations given by the European Commission (2022) in order to obtain an EU candidate status. As human rights, democracy and the rule of law form an integral part of the Commission’s recommendations, the Georgian government shall acknowledge that any law, policy, or initiative that undermines these values will be met with high criticism and opposition from the public.
Amnesty International. (2016). Russia: Four years of Putin’s ‘Foreign Agents’ law to shackle and silence NGOs. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2016/11/russia-four-years-of-putins-foreign-agents-law-to-shackle-and-silence-ngos/
Ecodefence and Others v. Russia, nos. 9988/13 and 60 others, European Court of Human Rights 2022. https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/fre#{%22itemid%22:[%22001-217751%22]}
European External Action Service (EEAS) Press Team. (2023). Georgia: Statement by the High Representative on the adoption of the “foreign influence” law. https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/georgia-statement-high-representative-adoption-%E2%80%9Cforeign-influence%E2%80%9D-law_en
European Commission v. Hungary, C‑78/18, Court of Justice of the European Union 2020. https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=227569&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=4209735
European Commission. (2022). Opinion on the EU membership application by Georgia. Brussels. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/document/print/en/qanda_22_3800/QANDA_22_3800_EN.pdf
Human Rights Watch. (2022). Russia: New Restrictions for ‘Foreign Agents’. https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/12/01/russia-new-restrictions-foreign-agents
Human Rights Watch. (2023). Georgia: ‘Foreign Agents’ Bill Tramples on Rights. https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/03/07/georgia-foreign-agents-bill-tramples-rights
Hungary Today. (2021). Government Revokes Controversial NGO Law. https://hungarytoday.hu/government-fidesz-orban-ngo-civil-org-law-foreign-funded-soros/
Kincha, Sh. (2023). Georgian Dream formally kill foreign agent draft law. OC Media. https://oc-media.org/georgian-dream-kill-foreign-agent-draft-law/
Mijatović, D. (2023). [Open letter to mr. Shalva Papuashvili, the Chairman of the Parliament of Georgia]. https://rm.coe.int/commhr-2023-5-letter-to-the-chairman-of-the-georgian-parliament-by-dun/1680aa5eba
National Democracy Initiative. (2023). Taking Georgians’ pulse: Findings from December 2022 face to face survey. https://www.ndi.org/sites/default/files/NDI%20Georgia_December%202022%20poll_public%20version_ENG_vf.pdf
United Nations in Georgia. (2023). Statement of the United Nations in Georgia on the draft Law on Transparency of Foreign Influence. https://www.undp.org/georgia/news/un-statement-on-draft-law-on-transparency-of-foreign-influence
Parulava, D. (2023). ‘Over my dead body’: How Georgian protesters beat a Russian-style legal threat to their freedoms. Politico. https://www.politico.eu/article/georgia-protest-russia-bill-freedoms-tbilisi-nato-eu/
This post was originally published on LSE Human Rights.
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Hong Kong police on Tuesday questioned the family of exiled former pro-democracy lawmaker Nathan Law, who the city’s leader has vowed to “pursue for life” under a national security law criminalizing public criticism of the authorities.
“Today, the Hong Kong national security police went to the apartments of Nathan Law’s parents and brother and took them away for questioning,” advocacy group Hong Kong Watch said in a statement on its website. “They were later released without arrest.”
The move came after national security police last week issued arrest warrants and bounties for eight prominent Hong Kong activists living in exile, accusing them of “collusion with foreign forces to endanger national security.”
Law, who now lives in the United Kingdom, announced in 2020 that he had cut ties with his family back in Hong Kong in a bid to protect them.
But police raided his parents’ home early Tuesday morning, taking away his parents and brother and questioning them about whether they had provided him with any financial support, or whether they were his “agents” in Hong Kong, according to multiple media reports.
“At around 6.00 a.m. today (July 11), the national security department [of the Hong Kong police force] searched two units in Yat Tung Estate, Tung Chung, where Nathan Law’s parents and elder brother live, and took [the three of them] away to take their statements,” the pro-Beijing Sing Tao Daily reported.
Police wanted to know if they had been providing financial assistance to Law or had acted on his behalf in Hong Kong, it said.
“After the three had made their statements, they were allowed to leave the police station,” the report said, versions of which also appeared on iCable News and in the South China Morning Post.
Bounties on their heads
The July 3 warrants also listed former pro-democracy lawmakers Ted Hui, now in Australia, U.K.-based Dennis Kwok, U.S.-based activist and political lobbyist Anna Kwok and Australia-based legal scholar Kevin Yam among the wanted.
U.K.-based activists Finn Lau and Mung Siu-tat and U.S.-based businessman Elmer Yuen are also on the wanted list.
Authorities have offered bounties of HK$1 million (US$127,700) for information that might lead to an arrest or a successful prosecution.
Those named face a slew of charges including “collusion with foreign powers” and “inciting subversion and secession” under a law imposed on Hong Kong by the Communist Party in the wake of the 2019 protest movement that effectively bans public dissent and peaceful political opposition.
The warrants were quickly followed by five more arrests of former associates of Law and the now-disbanded pro-democracy party Demosisto that he co-founded in the wake of the 2014 Umbrella Movement, who were accused of using the “Punish MEE” pro-democracy crowd-funding app to bankroll overseas activists.
The escalating crackdown has sparked international criticism of the authorities’ ongoing attempts at “long-arm” law enforcement overseas.
Hong Kong’s three-year-old national security law bans public criticism of the authorities as “incitement of hatred,” and applies to speech or acts committed by people of any nationality, anywhere in the world.
More targeted
Meanwhile, Secretary for Justice Paul Lam has lodged complaints to the Hong Kong Bar Association and The Law Society of Hong Kong against two others on the “wanted” list: former lawmaker Dennis Kwok and solicitor Kevin Yam, for “professional misconduct,” Hong Kong Watch said, adding that both could have their licenses to practice law in Hong Kong suspended.
“This is a drastic escalation since last week’s arrest warrants and bounties against the eight activists, which were already outrageous and completely unacceptable,” the group’s Chief Executive Benedict Rogers said.
The group called on British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly to summon the Chinese ambassador and ask him to explain why the authorities are targeting the families of Hong Kongers under the protection of the United Kingdom. Law has been granted political refugee status.
“The Hong Kong government is openly threatening activists abroad, in an attempt to silence them and spread fear among the community,” the statement said.
It said the threats against Law’s family showed that the situation in Hong Kong is increasingly similar to that of mainland China, and that any difference between the two systems of governance has been totally dismantled.
‘Rats crossing the street’
Chief Executive John Lee on Tuesday repeated his vow to “hunt down” Law and the other activists for the rest of their lives.
“I have said many times that we will hunt them down for the rest of their lives, and that we will use every means in our power to do so, including going after anyone providing them with financial or other kinds of assistance,” Lee told reporters on Tuesday.
“We will also go after the forces behind the scenes, who may even be controlling them,” he said, without elaborating on who those forces might be.
He likened the exiled activists to “rats crossing the street,” to be shunned unless anyone has information leading to their arrest or prosecution, in which case a reward could be offered.
Former Security Secretary Regina Ip earlier told reporters that she believed that while “normal” family contact with overseas activists wasn’t an issue, anyone sending funds to overseas activists who then used the money to lobby overseas parliaments to sanction Hong Kong “or other violations of the national security law,” could face prosecution.
More than 260 people have been arrested under the national security law, including dozens of former opposition lawmakers and political activists and senior journalists including pro-democracy media magnate Jimmy Lai, who is a British citizen.
An estimated 10,000 have been prosecuted for “rioting” or public order offenses in the wake of the 2019 protest movement, which Beijing views as an attempt by “hostile foreign forces” to foment a “color revolution” in Hong Kong.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Simon Lee for RFA Cantonese.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
When Australian Hazem Hamouda was whisked from Cairo airport to the notorious Tora prison, his daughter had no idea where he was – or that she’d spend the next year trying to get him out
Hazem Hamouda will never forget the emptiness of Cairo airport on the day he was imprisoned by the Egyptian authorities in 2018.
The Brisbane father of six had arrived to his homeland to see his Australian-born daughter Lamisse, who was studying at the American University in Cairo. The duo planned to holiday with family. But as Hamouda stood at the customs counter trying to establish his identity, a plainclothes security officer appeared quietly at his side.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Elena Milashina and Alexander Nemov were on their way to the sentencing of a human rights activist in Grozny when they were assaulted
Assailants have carried out a brutal attack on a human rights lawyer and a prominent Russian journalist in Chechnya, leaving them with stab wounds, broken fingers and head wounds.
The brazen assault on journalist Elena Milashina and lawyer Alexander Nemov in Grozny, Chechnya’s capital, was the most vicious in recent memory, leading even to a rare rebuke from the Kremlin which called it a “very serious attack that requires rather energetic measures”. Similar attacks in Chechnya, however, have gone unpunished for years.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Khatondi Soita Wepukhulu.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Sunak insists Rwanda is safe country to be sent after court rules in favour of charities and 10 asylum seekers
The bitter legal battle over the government’s flagship immigration policy is set to reach new heights after Downing Street insisted it would fight to overturn a ruling that sending refugees to Rwanda was unlawful.
Charities and others were jubilant on Thursday after judges at the court of appeal ruled in favour of campaign groups and 10 affected asylum seekers, while the opposition claimed the policy at heart of Rishi Sunak’s “Stop the Boats” pledge was now unravelling.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Some of the key findings by the court of appeal – and what they mean
Suella Braverman’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda suffered a fresh blow on Thursday after the court of appeal ruled by a majority of two to one that it was unlawful. Here are some of the key findings by the court of appeal justices and what they mean.
“There are substantial grounds for believing that there is a real risk that the asylum claims of RIs [relocated individuals] may be wrongly refused. On the face of it, it would appear to follow that there was a real risk of them being refouled. Where an asylum seeker’s claim is rejected the country in question will typically require them to leave the country (in the absence of any other basis on which they might claim residence), and since they will have been found to be at no risk in their country of origin, there is no reason why they should not be returned there; and even if they are in the first instance returned to some other country that does not exclude the possibility of indirect refoulement.”
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
