A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from International Women’s Day in Istanbul to ‘kill the bill’ protests in Cambridge
Janine Jackson interviewed TLDEF’s Andy Marra about trans youth rights for the March 4, 2022, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued an opinion calling gender-affirming care for trans young people “child abuse.” The state’s governor, Greg Abbott, doubled down, directing the Texas Department of Family and Planning Services to investigate parents who support their trans children in accessing care as child abusers. Abbott also suggested that teachers, doctors, nurses—anyone, really—could face criminal penalties if they don’t report parents and providers who support trans kids.
It’s frustrating to read media accounts that say “LGBTQ advocates” disagreed with or were concerned about this event, because, actually, pretty much every relevant medical and legal authority weighed in immediately to say not only do those statements not reflect the legal understanding of child abuse, but they fly in the face of the fact that support for gender-affirming medical procedures comes from, for instance, the American Medical Association, which states that not only is gender-affirming care appropriate, but that the absence of it leads to poor mental health outcomes.
In the same week, Joe Biden told trans youth, “I will always have your back” in the State of the Union address. So here to help us contextualize this past week in trans news is Andy Marra, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund. She joins us now by phone. Welcome to CounterSpin, Andy Marra.
Andy Marra: Thank you for having me, Janine.
JJ: Let’s start with Texas. It seems important to say that laws don’t have to change for people’s lives to change, for people to be harmed. What do you think, maybe what you’re hearing from folks in Texas, but what are your concerns about the effect of the statements on people, whether or not they changed the law?
AM: Well, the first thing that needs to be made clear, nothing said by Governor Abbott, or the attorney general in Texas, has any legal basis whatsoever.
JJ: Right.
AM: There hasn’t been a court in Texas, or a court anywhere in the country, that has found gender-affirming care to be considered “child abuse.” It’s just pure politics. And in light of the fact that Texas just concluded a primary, it seems pretty obvious that Governor Abbott was more than likely drumming up support amongst his base, at the expense of transgender young children in our country and the parents who love them dearly.
JJ: I think for a lot of people, it’s like a joke, that you would say that parents who support their child are abusers. And parents who abandon or deny or punish them? Well, they’re the healthy ones. But “this is so obviously absurd and hateful that surely nothing will come of it”—that’s not really proven such a successful approach.
AM: Well, it’s not legally binding, what Abbott and Paxton have both declared, but it is having a profound impact on our young people and their families. People in Texas, as a result of hearing the remarks and the actions taken, they might be afraid to bring their trans children to a doctor now, which is in no one’s best interest. Medically necessary care should be accessible, and should be determined by the patient and the healthcare provider. And, unfortunately, the governor and the attorney general are sending the completely opposite message.
Let’s talk about the actual effects that this political rhetoric is having on our young people. The Trevor Project, a partner of TLDEF, conducted a report, and they found 86% of LGBTQ young people in this country have said that recent politics has negatively impacted their well-being.
JJ: There’s like 195 state bills proposed in 2022 alone, and it’s just March. So we’re wrong to say “this is ridiculous.” We do have to engage at every level to push back against these bills, even if they’re just at a low level, even if they’re just maybe not going to bubble up to become actual law, they still are having an effect.
AM: You make a great point about the volume of anti-trans bills that are cropping up in state legislatures across the country. 2021 was no exception. There was a similar number of anti-trans bills introduced in state legislatures, including in the state of Texas. And it’s not a mistake, it is not a coincidence. What is happening is the result of a highly coordinated effort by a number of opponents who would seek to harm our young people in this country.
Organizations like the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Heritage Foundation, Concerned Women for America, these organizations have consistently attacked LGBTQ progress in this country. And their latest and greatest strawperson happens to be young people. It’s not only, in fact, despicable, it’s quite frankly putting some of our most vulnerable people in this country at risk. We are putting trans young people in actual risk for their safety and for their well-being. And for parents, there is an incredible amount of fear and confusion about how they can best support their children during these times.
So I just want to underscore, this is not a mistake, this is not a coincidence. This is a highly coordinated effort in an attempt to derail progress in this country. And sadly, for me, from a very infuriating position, the next generation is being attacked. And it’s downright despicable.
JJ: Are there any particular things that you would like news media to do more of, or maybe less of, in terms of their reporting on trans issues and these predations on trans people’s human rights?
Andy Marra: “When we talk about gender-affirming care, it’s not an ambiguous, abstract concept. It is medically necessary, life-saving care.”
AM: First things first, we need to remember that these attacks are on children and their families. This isn’t a trans rights issue. This is an infringement on the rights of families.
And we also need to remember that when we talk about gender-affirming care, it’s not an ambiguous, abstract concept. It is medically necessary, life-saving care that is backed up by every major medical association in this country.
We know that when trans people of all ages have access to gender-affirming care, it enables trans people to thrive. It improves their health and well being. And I would encourage news outlets across the country to pay attention, and to look for stories that explore more deeply the positive and lasting impacts of healthcare.
Politicians should not have the final say when it comes to who should receive medical care. That is completely up to a doctor. And for media outlets, as well as those of us who consume news, we have to remain skeptical of the political theater and the distraction from politicians like Governor Abbott and the attorney general in Texas.
JJ: I hear that, and I also hear how crucial intersectionality is, and how often that is missing from reporting, which tends to isolate issues and harms. You can be trans on Monday, but if you’re also Black, well, we’re going to do that story on Thursday, right? If you have a disability, well that’s Sunday. And I really appreciated Gabriel Arkles, senior counsel at TLDEF, who was reminding folks that things like organizations being allowed to use religious exemptions to deny services to LGBTQ people, that that’s especially bad and differently bad for poor people and working-class people, because they’re more likely to rely on services that wealthier people can avoid.
And he also noted that, if we’re talking about child removal—actually, genuinely taking kids out of families—well, that’s a much more real threat for some families than for others. And so I know you know that you can’t isolate issues, and if we’re talking about responses, we have to talk about intersecting those responses. And this is as true for trans youth as it is for many other folks.
AM: Absolutely. And on the matter of religious exemptions, look, in this country, we not only have civil rights protection, we also have religious exemptions as well. And both of those things have existed in this country for decades. And, look, TLDEF is a proponent and supporter of the Equality Act, which is a piece of federal legislation that would explicitly codify gender identity and sexual orientation as protected classes.
JJ: And Biden mentioned it, called it out last night.
AM: Absolutely. And we know that with this bill, and also the reality of the Senate’s composition, this is an issue that is going to require bipartisan support. And, sadly, our opponents, who do not want to see this crucial piece of legislation passed, have twisted very long standing and common sense principles, like religious exemptions, and distorted them to derail progress, more specifically to derail the passage of this bill.
So I would encourage listeners, and particularly media outlets, to delve even deeper on that particular subject, because, look, our opponents are fighting tooth and nail to ensure that either progress is completely derailed, or to slow it down to the fullest extent possible. And, quite frankly, the trans community, but more broadly the LGBTQ+ community, communities of color, communities of faith, would all benefit from this piece of legislation.
JJ: Let me just ask you, finally: One of the things I liked about another piece I read from Gabriel Arkles was the reminder that courts, not even the Supreme Court, don’t have the final say on an issue. The people do. And I think you’ve just touched on it, but if you could just say, where would you like to see people using their voice? It’s easy to get discouraged when we see things like Governor Abbott and those statements, and it’s easy to get confused about what actual impact that can have, and then, even if it’s not law, it still has an impact. What would you have listeners do to make their voices heard on this set of issues?
AM: I have received numerous emails and phone calls over the past several days related to developments in Texas, and I have been on the phone for many hours with our colleagues on the ground. And a lot of folks are asking: “What can I do in this moment? How can I be of help when it feels like there is nothing that can be done?” And I would say, pick up your phone, or go on your computer, and call or contact your US senator and call on them to pass the Equality Act.
There’s a crucial need for federal protections in this country that would not only strengthen existing civil rights laws in the United States, but would also expand them to include deeply marginalized community members. And for TLDEF, and for me as a trans woman, as a trans woman of color, it matters when the president gets up in front of the world and delivers the State of the Union that calls on his colleagues in Congress to pass the Equality Act. That matters. And for listeners that are looking for one thing to do in support of trans equality, I would encourage you all to contact your US senator right now and call on them to pass the Equality Act.
JJ: Thank you. We’ve been speaking with Andy Marra, Executive Director of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund. You can find and follow their work online at Transgenderlegal.org. Thank you so much, Andy Marra, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
Miami, March 10, 2022 — Peru’s Congress should reject a bill that would criminalize reporting based on leaked information from informants cooperating in criminal investigations, as it would negatively impact journalists’ ability to operate, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday.
On February 23, the Commission of Justice and Human Rights unanimously approved a bill that would amend several articles of the Code of Criminal Procedure and the penal code regarding “effective collaborators,” according to mediareports and a statement by the Lima-based regional group Institute of Press and Society (IPYS). An “effective collaborator” is someone who agrees to provide evidence for the prosecution in return for judicial lenience, although they are not always subject to the criminal investigation or proceeding, according to the Peruvian Prosecutor’s Office.
Under the proposed changes in the bill, anyone who reveals, even partly, the identity of an “effective collaborator” or the content of their testimony faces a prison sentence of between four and six years.
“The Peruvian Congress must reject this bill about ‘effective collaborators,’ as it risks criminalizing reporting based on leaked information from informants cooperating in criminal investigations,” said Natalie Southwick, CPJ’s Latin America and the Caribbean program coordinator, in New York. “A blanket prohibition on the publication of information stemming from the testimonies of informants, which can be of clear public interest, is incompatible with freedom of the press.”
In the past, informants’ testimonies have been leaked to journalists who then undertake their own investigations, according to Adriana León, director of Information Freedoms at IPYS, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app. León added that these testimonies were essential for the investigative reporting done by the Peruvian press in uncovering corruption in the country, especially in the well-known Lava Jato/Odebrecht and Montesinoscases.
The proposal is now ready for debate and vote before the plenary session of Congress, which could happen at any time now, according to León.
CPJ contacted the Peruvian Congress for comment by email, but the request went unanswered.
Dissident couple say their lives would be under threat if returned from Bosnia to Kuwait, as rights groups claim notice undermines refugee law
A Kuwaiti princess seeking asylum in Bosnia-Herzegovina has claimed the Kuwaiti state is using an Interpol red notice to intimidate and harass her and force the extradition of her partner, a prominent dissident blogger, back to the country.
Sheikha Moneera Fahad al-Sabah and Mesaed al-Mesaileem, said they face torture and threats to their lives if they are returned to Kuwait due to their political activism.
Public prosecutors’ claim that detainees inflicted injuries on themselves with a coin is ‘laughable’, says Human Rights Watch
Detainees seen in videos allegedly showing torture in a Cairo police station inflicted their injuries on themselves, according to Egyptian authorities, who have charged the prisoners with spreading “fake news”.
Up to 13 people detained in El-Salam First police station for unknown petty crimes made multiple videos that they say show the abuse they suffered at the hands of police officers and security forces.
Details of report revealed in high court as attorney general seeks interim injunction to prevent broadcast
A proposed BBC news report that the government is trying to block concerns an allegation that a named MI5 agent with “dangerous, extremist and misogynist beliefs” used his status to abuse, control and coerce a former partner, the high court has heard.
The attorney general, Suella Braverman, is seeking an injunction to prevent the BBC publishing its report, alleging breach of confidence and a breach of the agent’s rights, including his right to life, under the European convention on human rights (ECHR).
The ad from Sarah Palin’s PAC that prompted the New York Times (6/14/17) to write that in Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ 2011 shooting, “the link to political incitement was clear.”
Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate who helped propel the right flank of the Republican Party into its current prominence, came to New York City with a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times. She lost in court, but her offensive against the paper is a symptom of a growing political campaign against a crucial legal centerpiece of US press freedom.
A Times editorial (6/14/17) used an ad from Palin’s political action committee that placed crosshairs over congressional districts as an example of partisan speech run amok, suggesting it had a connection to a 2011 shooting that maimed Rep. Gabby Giffords and left six others dead. The original text read:
In 2011, when Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl, the link to political incitement was clear. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized crosshairs.
The paper later issued a correction (6/16/17), saying that the editorial “incorrectly stated that a link existed between political rhetoric” and the shooting of Giffords, when “no such link was established.” A revised text replaced “the link to political incitement was clear” with “At the time, we and others were sharply critical of the heated political rhetoric on the right,” and added: “But in that case no connection to the shooting was ever established.”
Following the standard
Palin said in court that the mistake caused her lasting damage (NPR, 2/10/22): “It’s hard to lay your head on a pillow and have a restful night when you know that lies are told about you, a specific lie that was not going to be fixed.”
The jury rejected her defamation claim, bringing the Times a legal victory against the former governor (CNN, 2/15/22). The jury’s role in the case, it turned out, was merely symbolic. Judge Jed Rakoff declared as the jury deliberated that he would dismiss the case regardless of what they decided, because Palin “failed to show the Times acted with ‘actual malice.’” And that, according to the precedent set in the 1964 Supreme Court decisionNew York Times v. Sullivan, is “the standard in lawsuits involving public figures” (Reuters, 2/14/22). (The “actual malice” standard requires public figures suing for libel to prove that falsehoods were made either intentionally or with “reckless disregard” for the truth.)
James Bennet, the editorial page editor at the Times at the time, took full responsibility for associating Palin’s ad with the Giffords shooting (New York Post, 2/8/22). The paper admitted that it made an error and issued a correction promptly (NPR, 2/12/22). Even looking at the editorial’s original form, however, it’s hard to prove that a vague word like “link” is factually false; it never came out and said that Giffords’ shooting was caused by Palin’s ad—a point Bennet made at trial: “If I thought it caused the violence, I would have used the word ‘cause,’” he said (Reuters, 2/9/22). It’s unsurprising that the jury found for the Times, even without the “actual malice” standard that public figures have to meet when suing for libel.
Cheering for weaker legal protections
The Wall Street Journal s James Freeman (2/9/22) would like to make it easier for politicians to sue journalists because the New York Times “continues to mention Ms. Palin in a negative light.”
But that protection for the press, once seen as a necessary shield to protect independent speech from powerful figures who could otherwise use legal might to crush dissent, is being turned into the bad guy in this case, less a shield than a weapon that the establishment press can use against anyone in the public eye that it wants to tar publicly.
Palin, a former governor and vice presidential candidate as well as a powerful icon in conservative movement, presented herself as a David to the Times’ Goliath (New York Times, 2/10/22). Her lawyer, Shane Vogt, asserted that Palin’s team was “keenly aware of the fact that we’re fighting an uphill battle” (Politico, 2/3/22). The Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman (2/9/22) said that “Bennet is arguing that he didn’t mean to write what he clearly wrote,” and that if his “argument is credited, media outfits can publish almost anything and then run corrections while claiming they meant no harm.”
For many observers, these were crocodile tears and part of a public campaign to discredit the media and paint conservatives as victims of an unaccountable newspaper. Politico (2/10/22) said that Palin “knows the whole episode has enhanced, not damaged, her reputation with the partisans on whom her political and financial fortunes depend.” Her target is “the news organization her confederates on the right have seethed over since the Nixon era,” and others are “cheering her case” because they “hope to weaken the legal protections benefiting all journalists.”
‘Constitutional Brezhnev doctrine’
FAIR.org (3/26/21): Right-wing judicial activism “has breathed new legal life into the prospect of making it easier for political and corporate leaders to use defamation suits to stifle the press.”
That last part is critical. Protections like those afforded under Sullivan have been considered sacrosanct by press and free speech advocates. When then-President Donald Trump vowed to make it easier for him to sue journalists, the press scoffed (CNBC, 1/10/18; LA Times, 9/8/18). But the Palin case is a reminder that this threat was not the random musing of a thin-skinned demagogue, but an idea gaining steam on the broader right.
Almost a full year ago, FAIR (3/26/21) pointed to a dissent written by circuit court judge, long-time conservative legal operative Laurence Silberman, which called the Sullivan standard a “constitutional Brezhnev doctrine” to defend the liberal press against the right. And that was just the tip of the iceberg: At least two Supreme Court justices have wanted to revisit the Sullivan standard, and legal scholar Richard Epstein has railed against it since the 1980s.
This has intensified. The Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press (1/18/22) said that at the beginning of this year, the Supreme Court “called for a response to yet another petition asking it to overturn its decision” in Sullivan. Last year, Justice Neil Gorsuch cited “‘momentous changes in the nation’s media landscape since 1964’ as his reason to revisit Sullivan.”
The committee also noted that “Justice Clarence Thomas pointed to the ease with which the ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy theory spread online”—an odd argument for Thomas to make, given the fervent advocacy of his wife, right-wing activist Gini Thomas, on behalf of the conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump (New York Times Magazine, 2/22/22).
Genevieve Lakier (Washington Post, 2/3/22) suggests making it difficult for public figures to sue “might have made sense” when it protected “large media organizations,” but it “makes no sense today, when anyone can spread misinformation so long as they have social media followers.”
University of Chicago law professor Genevieve Lakier (Washington Post, 2/3/22) cited these critiques of the “actual malice” standards. She noted that while Sullivan is “an emblem of American free-speech exceptionalism and a source of pride,” it is also “an accident of history”—one that “removes any legal incentive for those who write about public officials or public figures to vigorously fact-check their stories.”
The United States, Lakier said, should “not let Sullivan limit our imagination of how First Amendment law could better serve the public interest in a vastly different media environment” from 1964, when the decision was handed down. (Her “most obvious” suggestion as a replacement for Sullivan are “damage caps”—which would allow lawsuits by public figures to be a manageable expense for outlets with deep pockets, while making them potentially catastrophic to independent journalists.)
‘A perverse incentive’
Three years ago, the American Bar Association (2/27/19) noted:
With breaking news being delivered in a tweet, it is easier now more than ever for journalists to simply get it wrong. This raises two questions: (1) Should there be a more relaxed standard for public officials rather than actual malice, and (2) would doing so create a chilling effect? These questions may soon have answers if courts do what Justice Thomas urges, which is reconsideration of jurisprudence in this area.
In the end, Justice Thomas seems to go a step further than just arguing for a more relaxed standard; relying on common law, he deems libel against public figures, “if anything, more serious and injurious than ordinary libels.” His concurrence provides momentum for critics of [Sullivan] and room for courts to reexamine the standard, as the press continues to face increased scrutiny.
Noah Feldman said at Bloomberg (7/7/21) that, according to Gorsuch, “the Sullivan precedent creates a perverse incentive not to check facts—so that you can later say that you didn’t realize what you were saying was false,” and that therefore, “the Sullivan rule no longer serves its original objective of creating an informed public debate.” (Gorsuch is describing here what’s known legally as “reckless disregard”—precisely what is not protected by the Sullivan standard.)
Press advocates believe that false statements against a public figure come with the cost of celebrity, Feldman argued, but “it has become harder for such stories to be shunted aside.” For “non-celebrities who might still be deemed public figures,” the actual malice standard “makes it very hard for them to vindicate their concerns about their own reputation.” Feldman warned press advocates to brace themselves for this precedent to be revisited.
A partisan distrust
Public trust in media has fallen, although that trend is highly partisan. Gallup (10/7/21) noted that “68% of Democrats, 11% of Republicans and 31% of independents…trust the media a great deal or fair amount,” while “confidence in the media among Republicans over the past five years is at unprecedented lows.” Palin’s unsuccessful legal challenge against the Times will only solidify that skepticism among her political base, boosting the narrative that conservatives can be vilified in the court of opinion with no recourse in a court of law.
The consequences of that skepticism go beyond drops in subscriptions and the rise of more partisan, start-up media outlets. It is about building a political and legal case that media outlets enjoy too much free speech, and that a conservative Supreme Court should undo a precedent by the Warren court, the most liberal era of the high court’s history. Such a change could have an enormous stifling effect on the press—establishment and otherwise.
The European Union has stepped up its strategic engagement with the Indo-Pacific by convening an inaugural meeting with the region’s top diplomats and then affirming the bloc’s commitment to freedom of navigation and international law – an apparent rebuke of China.
At the Ministerial Forum for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, which took place in Paris on Tuesday, the EU announced the extension of the concept of a coordinated maritime presence in the north-west Indian Ocean, to support regional stability and security. That would ensure a permanent and visible European naval presence and outreach.
“This will allow the EU to further support stability and security in the Indo-Pacific region, to optimize naval deployments, to promote coherence of European action and to facilitate the exchange of information and cooperation with partners in the Indo-Pacific, including by conducting joint maritime exercises and port calls,” according to astatementissued at the end of the meeting.
Top diplomats from 30 Indo-Pacific counties and 27 foreign ministers from EU member-states took part in the meeting hosted by France, this year’s president of the Council of the European Union. The United States and China were not at the forum in the French capital.
The forum “highlighted the shared ambition among participants to: reaffirm their commitment to a rules-based international order, democratic values and principles, as well as to the strengthening of multilateralism and the rule of law, respect for international law, and freedom of navigation, in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS),” the statement said.
Participants also agreed to work towards peace and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific, which has become a pre-eminent geopolitical theater as Washington responds to an increasingly assertive Beijing in the disputed South China Sea. China has never accepted a 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague that Beijing’s expansive “historical claims” in the waterway have no legal basis.
The Indo-Pacific meanwhile has become strategically important for the EU, which is the top investor in the region, according to the European Commission (EC).
Together, the Indo-Pacific and Europe command more than 70 percent of the global trade in goods and services, as well as more than 60 percent of foreign-direct investment flows, the EC said on its website.
However, the commission warned, the growing geopolitical rivalry could threaten this increasingly robust trade and investment relationship.
“[C]urrent dynamics in the Indo-Pacific have given rise to intense geopolitical competition adding to increasing tensions on trade and supply chains as well as in technological, political and security areas” the commission said.
“This is the reason why the EU has decided to step up its strategic engagement with the Indo-Pacific region.”
The statement issued after Tuesday’s meeting highlighted this point.
“The EU participants reiterated the importance of the Indo-Pacific region for Europe and underlined their support for an increased and long-term engagement of the EU and its member-states through concrete actions,” the statement said.
“The role of the outermost regions and European overseas countries and territories in the Indo-Pacific was highlighted in this respect,” the statement said, referring to France which has territories in the region.
The Indo-Pacific is home to nearly 2 million French citizens and 9 million square kilometers (3.47 million square miles) of its exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian (left) and Josep Borrell, the European Union’s high representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (right), welcome Indonesian Minister of Foreign Affairs Retno Marsudi during the Indo-Pacific Ministerial Cooperation Forum, in Paris, Feb. 22, 2022. Credit: AFP
Stability in the region has been threatened lately through alleged incursions by Chinese research ships, maritime militia and aircraft in the EEZs or of Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia, respectively.
Six Asian governments have territorial claims or maritime boundaries in the South China Sea that overlap with the sweeping claims of China.
They are Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. While Indonesia does not regard itself as party to the South China Sea dispute, Beijing claims historic rights to parts of that sea overlapping Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone.
Retno Marsudi, Indonesia’s minister of foreign affairs who attended the meeting, said she reiterated that international law “must be respected.”
“Peace, stability and respect for international law must be at the center of regional cooperation and all discussions,” she told a virtual news conference from Paris on Wednesday.
“Indonesia emphasized the importance of cooperation and collaboration amidst deepening rivalry that could lead to open conflict,” she said, adding, “Indonesia sees the Indo-Pacific as a vast sea of opportunity too large to be dominated by any one country. Therefore, mutual security, mutual stability, and common prosperity must be a public good.”
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news service.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Shailaja Neelakantan and Ronna Nirmala for BenarNews.
The last confrontation in Wet’suwet’en had First Nations from other provinces joining in solidarity. Enter Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and his anti-protest legislation. Kenney quickly enacted Bill 1 to protect “critical infrastructure” and to fine those driven to protest. This is your Canada. There is a rule of law for the First Nations and a rule of law that applies to non-First Nation people. What happens to First Nation people standing against injustice? They are beaten, cuffed and thrown into jail. At Wet’suwet’en, even some non-First Nation journalists were thrown into jail for reporting on the Wet’suwet’en land defence. How can we reconcile this?
Rules making it harder for media to name those under criminal investigation could change when Human Rights Act replaced
Privacy laws that make it harder for the media to name individuals under criminal investigation could be rolled back as part of ministers’ plans to replace the Human Rights Act, government sources have suggested.
The claim follows concerns raised by media outlets over this week’s landmark Bloomberg v ZXC supreme court ruling. Judges concluded that Bloomberg News was wrong to name a businessman facing a criminal investigation relating to his work activities because he had a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Law makes it an offence to perform so-called ‘therapy’ on anyone under 18 and comes with sentence of up to three years’ imprisonment
New Zealand has banned conversion practices, with near unanimity, after all but eight National party members voted in favour of the law.
Conversion “therapy” refers to the practice, often by religious groups, of trying to “cure” people of their sexuality, gender expression or LGBTQI identity.
Human rights groups said the verdict was part of a troubling trend in Greece’s criminal justice system
An Athens court has handed two prominent human rights defenders prison sentences, suspended for three years, after finding the pair guilty of “falsely accusing” a Greek Orthodox bishop of racist hate speech.
The three-member tribunal sentenced the activists to 12-month jail terms after acquitting the bishop, Seraphim, the Metropolitan of Piraeus, of antisemitic rhetoric.
The shameful litany of attacks on medical facilities and workers continues to grow
Those who save the lives of others need protection themselves. At least 415 attacks against health workers and facilities have been carried out since last year’s coup in Myanmar, according to a report published recently. It has become one of the most dangerous places on Earth for medics, with half of all such global attacks in the first six months of last year. The war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region has seen the large-scale destruction of facilities. With the crisis deepening in Sudan, last month the UN reported 15 healthcare attacks since November.
It is over a century and a half since the agreement of the first Geneva convention, an international prohibition on attacking the sick and wounded, assaulting or punishing those who offer them healthcare, and inflicting violence on hospitals and ambulances. Those protections have since been broadened and strengthened repeatedly.
The EHRC is no longer independent. That’s why we are seeking international intervention from the UN
Nancy Kelley is the chief executive of Stonewall
Human rights must take precedence over personal beliefs and political whims. That is why there are strong international mechanics in place to ensure national human rights bodies can operate independently of their governments.
However, here in the UK, these mechanics are wheezing under the weight of a string of appointments to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) that run counter to human rights for all.
UK-based Hong Kong Watch says outage could be part of wider Beijing crackdown
The website of a UK-based advocacy group appears to have become inaccessible through some networks in Hong Kong, raising fears of mainland-style internet censorship in the Chinese territory.
The group, Hong Kong Watch, which monitors human rights, said it worried the censorship could be a part of a wider crackdown on freedom of speech under Hong Kong’s national security law, which allows the police to ask service providers to “delete” information or “provide assistance” on national security cases.
The government promised to learn from Windrush, but citizens trafficked to Syria by Islamic State have also been abandoned
The government’s proposed new powers to strip people of their citizenship without notice rang alarm bells in communities across Britain. Despite being the first Muslim woman in our country’s history to serve in the cabinet, my family and I could be deprived of our citizenship without being told about it, and cast out of our home country if the Home Office believed this would be conducive to the public good. Two in five people from ethnic minority backgrounds could be at risk.
Successive British governments have torn down the basic belief that all British citizens in this country are and should be equal. The consequences of this government’s unprecedentedly broad use of citizenship-stripping powers have become even more clear to me after hearing directly from the families of British citizens detained in north-east Syria.
“It’s disappointing to see the Senate rush through a bill that will harm communities, particularly the communities of color and people with disabilities this Legislature made a commitment to protect when it passed more than a dozen bills last year aimed at reform and accountability in policing. The effectiveness of those bills is indicated by data showing a 62% decrease in police killings since their enactment last year.
Parliamentary report finds ‘compelling evidence’ of trafficking and highlights missed opportunities to protect vulnerable people later stripped of citizenship
There is “compelling evidence” that British women and children currently detained in camps in north-east Syria were trafficked to the country against their will, according to a new parliamentary report.
After a six-month inquiry by the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on trafficked Britons in Syria, the report published on Thursday highlights how systemic failures by UK public bodies enabled Islamic State trafficking of vulnerable women and children as young as 12.
Maj Gen Abel Kandiho is blacklisted by US for presiding over ‘horrific’ targeting of opposition activists
Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, has appointed a former military intelligence chief, who is blacklisted by the US over alleged rights violations, to lead the country’s feared police force.
Uganda’s police and military have been accused of widespread human rights abuses, including arbitrary detention, torture and assassination. Much of the repression has been directed at opposition activists contesting the 36-year rule of Museveni.
Lily Faraji, Zeinab Sahafi and Ismail Fattahi were arrested after attending a protest in the southern Turkish city of Denizli last March. A fourth Iranian national, Mohammad Pourakbari, was detained with the others, despite not attending the protests, according to Buse Bergamalı, their lawyer.
Jonathan Cooper chair of the history of sexualities will expand research into LGBTQ+ history at university
A new professorship in the history of sexualities is to be established at the University of Oxford, after a £5m donation in memory of the human rights lawyer and LGBTQ+ activist Jonathan Cooper who died last year.
The new chair will expand the teaching and research into LGBTQ+ history carried out at Oxford and will be the first fully endowed post of its type in the UK when it launches in 2023.
Urgent protection for minority groups facing increased repression needed in crisis connected to escalating clashes across central Asian ex-Soviet region, say human rights groups
Parents of men killed by Tajikistan forces have called on the international community to step in and urgently protect ethnic groups being targeted by the Tajik regime.
In a rare interview, families from the Pamiri ethnic minority have demanded that soldiers who killed their sons be brought to justice and urged the UN to prevent a new phase of conflict in Tajikistan, a landlocked country in central Asia.
The prime minister seems temperamentally unsuited the demands of his own increasingly authoritarian agenda
“Creeping authoritarianism” is the wolf of the left, and we cry it all the time: I remember, almost nostalgically, thinking David Cameron was a creeping authoritarian for outsourcing punitive benefits initiatives to private companies; and that Theresa May was one when she earned the dubious accolade of politician least likely to answer the question in a broadcast interview. However, there is no ignoring or denying the vastly more anti-democratic manoeuvres of Boris Johnson’s government.
The elections bill, currently in the Lords, features mandatory photo ID, which is well known to disfranchise younger and lower-income voters. It poses a direct threat to the reach and independence of the Electoral Commission, has serious implications for who can and cannot campaign at election time, and extends the perverse first-past-the-post voting system to the election of mayors and police commissioners. Beyond the explicit restriction of democracy, there is no plausible rationale for the bill; and unsettlingly, very little attempt has been made to produce one.
Death threat follow arrest in Russia of mother of exiled anti-torture lawyer Abubakar Yangulbayev
A Chechen politician has threatened to “rip the heads off” the family of an anti-torture activist whose mother was arrested and forcibly returned to the tightly controlled republic.
Zarema Musayeva, the mother of Abubakar Yangulbayev, an exiled former lawyer for the Committee Against Torture, was detained by Chechen forces in mid-January in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod.
My brother, Michael McColgan, who has died aged 83, was a lifelong socialist and political activist. He gave up his career as a German university lecturer to retrain as a lawyer so that he could represent people fighting for justice, and was involved in the cases of the Orgreave miners in the 1980s and in the fight for truth and justice following the Hillsborough disaster.
Mike was born in Islington, north London, the son of Lilian (nee Martin), a librarian, and Patrick McColgan, a local government officer – both leftwing activists. He grew up in Chingford, Essex, and attended the Monoux grammar school, Walthamstow (now Sir George Monoux college).
Walker was convicted of assaulting her ex-husband in Reykjavík in 2017. Now she and eight other women are taking Iceland to court claiming human rights violations
On a winter’s evening in January 2020 two women stood talking in the foyer of a cinema in Iceland’s capital, Reykjavík. One of them, dressed smartly for the occasion in a red blazer, was Eliza Reid, the wife of Iceland’s president. The other, listening intently, was Nara Walker, an Australian artist who’d cofounded the event that both women were there to celebrate – the Reykjavik Feminist film festival.
At first glance, it wasn’t a remarkable scene. Unless you knew that Walker was still on probation for a serious assault conviction, having been released from a Reykjavík prison less than a year earlier. Or if you’d read the breathless coverage of her story in the tabloid media, where she’d been branded “the Australian tongue-biter” – the woman who bit off her husband’s tongue during a fight. In Iceland, and beyond, she was infamous.
British judges are lending credibility to an increasingly anti-democratic justice system in Hong Kong, argues Siobhain McDonagh
The Orwellian reports coming from Hong Kong will come as no surprise to those of us who have been watching its legal system deteriorate (New Hong Kong barristers’ chief warns profession to stay out of politics, 21 January). Since the draconian national security law was imposed in 2020, Beijing’s interference in Hong Kong has been increasingly flagrant. As shocking as the attack on the rule of law in Hong Kong is, we should also be asking why British judges are still propping up a broken system.
British judges have sat in Hong Kong’s court of final appeal since the territory was returned in 1997. But the deterioration of the city’s legal system means they are now lending a false veneer of respectability to Beijing’s campaign against human rights and political freedom.
Award made to Kate Wilson after tribunal rules police grossly violated her human rights
An environmental activist who was deceived into a two-year intimate relationship by an undercover police officer has been awarded £229,000 in compensation after winning a landmark legal case.
Kate Wilson won the compensation after a tribunal ruled in a scathing judgment that police had grossly violated her human rights in five ways.
Bulgaria’s government has been accused of negligence for failing to prioritise over-65s and people with pre-existing health conditions in its Covid vaccine rollout, in a case that exposes the low uptake of jabs in one of the EU’s poorest member states.
The Open Society Foundations (OSF) charitable group said it was filing a formal complaint to the human-rights-focused Council of Europe, alleging that Bulgaria’s government had put lives at risk, possibly leading to thousands of avoidable deaths.
