The Labour peer and former Liberty director makes a clear, impassioned case for human rights law, but steers surprisingly clear of thorny political arguments
It may sound a little melodramatic to say that human rights are under attack in Britain. But in the week I opened this book, it certainly didn’t feel that way. Parliament was locked in battle over the Rwanda bill, widely seen as driving a coach and horses through human rights obligations, with Shami Chakrabarti herself in the thick of the fray as a Labour peer. Nigel Farage was once again demanding Britain leave the European convention on human rights – the new passion project for Brexiters who would rather not talk about how Brexit itself is going, and who see the convention as a haven of suspiciously lefty values – while Rishi Sunak was bending over backwards not to rule that out. There’s still something faintly surreal about having to actively make a case for the right to life, liberty, or freedom from being tortured – who doesn’t automatically value these things? – but if Brexit taught us anything, it’s that liberals are surprisingly bad at defending truths that seem so obvious we’ve never given them much thought. This time, it pays to be ready.
Chakrabarti has already covered some of this ground in her brilliant first book, On Liberty, in which she reflected on her time running the civil liberties organisation of that name and somehow pulled off the rare feat of tackling extremely serious issues without taking herself too seriously. This third book, however, feels more like sitting through an undergraduate lecture, albeit an absorbing one.
James Toon, who helped develop the act in the 1990s, responds to an article by Shami Chakrabarti on the pressing need for equal treatment
I read with interest Shami Chakrabarti’s article (The big idea: why we need human rights now more than ever, 6 May). The context for her article is the Conservative right’s repeated calls to repeal the Human Rights Act 1998. This was one of the landmark statutes of the first Blair administration, and its legal and constitutional significance is immense.
Although now retired, I was a member of the Home Office bill team that developed the policy broadly set out in the 1996 Labour document Bringing Rights Home, supported ministers during its passage through parliament, and started work on its implementation. I had several discussions with Jack Straw, the then home secretary.
Stockholm, May 10, 2024—Georgian authorities should thoroughly investigate widespread harassment and threats against journalists covering a bill that would designate media outlets as “foreign agents” and Parliament should reject the draft law, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday.
Since May 7, more than 30 journalists covering the bill “on transparency of foreign influence” and public protests against it have been targeted with anonymous abusive and threatening phone calls, journalists from 10 different independent news outlets told CPJ.
On May 9, Nino Zuriashvili, head of Studio Monitor, which makes investigative documentaries, and Gela Mtivlishvili, editor-in-chief of the independent website Mountain News, told CPJ that unknown individuals covered the entrances to their offices with posters and graffiti denouncing them as “foreign agents.”
Tamta Muradashvili, director of independent broadcaster Mtavari Arkhi, told CPJ that more than 10 of her colleagues had received threatening and abusive calls. She said she believed it was “very clear that the campaign is coordinated by government agencies,” given its scale, the callers’ access to government-held personal data, and the lack of response from the authorities.
“Increasing threats and intimidation against journalists in Georgia are deeply concerning and demonstrate that the ‘foreign agent’ bill not only unjustly restricts and stigmatizes journalists but also makes them more unsafe,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York.
“With the eyes of the world on Georgia over this bill and the country’s hopes of joining the European Union, the authorities should know their reputation is on the line if they don’t conduct a swift and convincing investigation into acts of intimidation against journalists and ensure media workers’ safety.”
The bill would require media outlets and nonprofits receiving more than 20% of their income from abroad to register as “organizations pursuing the interests of a foreign power.” Parliament is expected to pass the bill in a third and final reading by May 17.
‘No place in Georgia for agents’
Zuriashvili told CPJ that a man called her from an international number on May 7, asked if she was from Studio Monitor, swore at her, and asked why she was critical of the foreign agent bill.
Zuriashvili posted a photo on Facebook of her office door, showing graffiti that she found on May 9, written “agents’ HQ” and printed posters showing her face, name, and Studio Monitor’s logo, with the words, “There is no place in Georgia for agents.”
On May 10, unknown individuals plastered dozens of posters on the façade of Zuriashvili’s apartment and graffitied her car with obscene images and the phrase “agent who sold themselves for money,” the news website Netgazeti reported.
Mountain News also posted images of dozens of similar posters and graffiti that were found to have been plastered on the walls of Mtivlishvili’s home and the outlet’s office on May 9.
On May 8, Natia Kuprashvili, founder of independent broadcaster TOK TV, said on Facebook that an unidentified caller recited her address and said they were waiting for her at her apartment.
Zuriashvili, Mtivlishvili and several other journalists told CPJ that they believed they were targeted for their vocal opposition to the foreign agent bill and for their outlets’ critical coverage of the bill and Georgian authorities.
Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili said on May 8 that authorities would create a public online register of individuals who were “involved in violence, other illegal actions, threats and blackmail, or publicly approve of such actions.” Muradashvili said such a register would likely be used against critics of the bill and that the authorities’ announcement of the register amid the intimidation campaign demonstrated their repressive direction.
CPJ also spoke to journalists at the independent broadcasters TV Pirveli and TV Formula and at the news websites JAMnews, OC Media, Netgazeti, Batumelebi, and Georgian News who all said that their staff had been targeted with threatening calls.
CPJ’s emails requesting comment from the ruling Georgian Dream party, and email and Facebook message to the Special Investigation Service, which investigates allegations of crimes against journalists, did not immediately receive any replies.
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.
Ten months after Georgia officials said they would take steps to ensure that counties were correctly handling massive numbers of challenges to voter registrations, neither the secretary of state’s office nor the State Election Board has done so.
Instead of fixing the problem, the Republican-controlled Georgia legislature passed SB 189 at the end of March. The bill’s authors claim that it will help prevent voting fraud, while voting rights advocates warn that it could make the issue worse. Gov. Brian Kemp signed it into law on Monday.
“I see this as being pro-America, pro-accuracy, pro-transparency and pro-election integrity,” state Rep. John LaHood said of the bill, which he worked to help pass. “I don’t see it being” about voter suppression “whatsoever.”
When it takes effect in July, SB 189 will make it easier for Georgia residents to use questionable evidence when challenging fellow residents’ voter registrations. Voting rights activists also claim that the law could lead county officials to believe they can approve bulk challenges closer to election dates.
“It’s bad policy and bad law, and will open the floodgates to bad challenges,” said Caitlin May, a voting rights attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, which has threatened to sue over what it says is the law’s potential to violate the NVRA.
ProPublica previously reported on how just six right-wing advocates challenged the voter registrations of 89,000 Georgians following the 2021 passage of a controversial law that enabled residents to file unlimited voter challenges. We also revealed that county election officials may have been systematically approving challenges too close to election dates, which would violate the NVRA.
The Georgia secretary of state’s office said at the time that it was “thankful” for information provided by ProPublica, that it had been working on “uniform standards for voter challenges” and that it had “asked the state election board to provide rules” to help election officials handle the challenges. And the chair of the State Election Board told ProPublica last year that though the board hadn’t yet offered rules due to the demands of the 2022 election, “now that the election is over, we intend to do that.”
With the new law soon to be in effect, the State Election Board is determining its next steps. “We’re going to probably have to try and provide some instruction telling” election officials how to respond to SB 189, said John Fervier, who was appointed chair in January after the former chair stepped down. “I don’t know if that will come from the State Election Board or from the secretary of state’s office. But we’re one day past the signing of the legislation, so it’s still too early for me to comment on what kind of instruction will go out at this point.”
Mike Hassinger, a public information officer for the secretary of state’s office, said in a statement that it falls to the State Election Board to review laws and come up with rules. “Once the board moves forward with that process we are more than happy to extend help to rule making,” Hassinger said.
Conservative organizations have been vocal about their plans to file numerous challenges to voter registrations this year, providing training and other resources to help Georgians do so. Activists and Georgia Republican Party leadership publicly celebrated the passage of SB 189, with the GOP chair telling the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that this year’s legislative session was “a home run for those of us concerned about election integrity.”
But what has not gotten as much attention is how individuals who were involved in producing massive numbers of voter challenges managed to shape SB 189.
Jason Frazier, who in 2023 was a Republican nominee to the Fulton County election board, challenged the registrations of nearly 10,000 people in Fulton County, part of the Democratic stronghold of Atlanta.
(Cheney Orr for ProPublica)
Courtney Kramer, the former executive director of True the Vote, a conservative organization that announced it was filing over 360,000 challenges in Georgia after the 2020 presidential election, played an instrumental role in getting the bill passed. She was the co-chair of the Election Confidence Task Force, a committee of the Georgia Republican Party that provided sample language to legislators crafting SB 189. An internal party email reviewed by ProPublica thanked Kramer for her dedication in helping bring “us to the final stages of pushing essential election integrity reform through the legislature.” Kramer said in a statement that “my goal was to restore confidence in Georgia’s elections process” and to “make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.”
Jason Frazier, who ProPublica previously found was one of the state’s six most prolific challengers, served on the Election Confidence Task Force. Frazier did not respond to requests for comment.
In late July, William Duffey, who was then the chair of Georgia’s State Election Board, was working on a paper to update county election officials on how to handle voter challenges. But when the board met in August 2023, a large crowd of right-wing activists packed the room, and dozens of people castigated the board for defending the legitimacy of the 2020 election. One mocked a multicultural invocation with which Duffey had started the meeting, declaring, “The only thing you left out was satanism!” A right-wing news outlet accused “the not so honorable Judge Duffey” of hiding “dirt” on the corruption of the 2020 election.
Less than a month later, Duffey stepped down. He denied that activists had driven him out, telling ProPublica that pressure from such activists “comes with the job.” But, he explained, the volunteer position had been taking “70% of my waking hours,” and “I wanted to get back to things for which I had scoped out my retirement.”
According to two sources knowledgeable about the board’s workings, who asked for anonymity to discuss confidential board matters, Duffey had been the primary force behind updating the rules about voter challenges, and without him, the effort stalled. One source also said that the board had realized that Republican legislators planned to rewrite voter-challenge laws, and members wanted to see what they would do.
In January 2024, Republican legislators began working on those bills. The one that succeeded, SB 189, introduces two especially important changes that would help challengers, according to voting rights activists.
First, it says a dataset kept by the U.S. Postal Service to track address changes provides sufficient grounds for election officials to approve challenges, if that data is backed up by secondary evidence from governmental sources. Researchers have found the National Change of Address dataset to be unreliable in establishing a person’s residence, as there are many reasons a person could be listed as living outside of Georgia but could still legally vote there. ProPublica found in 2023 that counties frequently dismissed challenges because of that unreliability. And voting rights activists claim that the secondary sources SB 189 specifies include swaths of unreliable data.
“My worry is” that the bill “will cause a higher success rate for the challenges,” said Anne Gray Herring, a policy analyst for nonprofit watchdog group Common Cause Georgia.
The new bill also states that starting 45 days before an election, county election boards cannot make a determination on a challenge. Advocates have expressed concerns that counties will interpret the law to mean that they can approve mass, or systematic, challenges up until 45 days before an election. The NVRA prohibits systematic removal of voters within 90 days of an election, and election boards commonly dismissed challenges that likely constituted systematic removal within the 90-day window, ProPublica previously found.
When True the Vote was challenging voters in the aftermath of the 2020 election, a judge issued a restraining order against the challenges for violating the 90-day window.
Whether SB 189 violates the NVRA could be settled in court, according to voting rights advocates and officials. On Tuesday, after SB 189 was signed, Gabriel Sterling, the chief operating officer for the Georgia secretary of state, disputed on social media that the new law would make voter challenges easier. But months earlier, he said that imprecision in the voter challenges process could lead to legal problems.
“When you do loose data matching, you get a lot of false positives,” Sterling said, testifying about voter list maintenance before the Senate committee that would pass a precursor to SB 189. “And when you get a lot of false positives and then move on them inside the NVRA environment, that’s when you get sued.”
This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Doug Bock Clark.
Alan Miller to go to death in September as state rejects warnings that gas-mask method represents cruel and unusual punishment
Alabama has scheduled its second execution of a death row prisoner using the novel technique of nitrogen gas, brushing aside objections that the procedure is a form of cruel and unusual punishment banned under the US constitution.
Barring last-minute judicial moves, Alan Miller, 59, will be put to his death on 26 September, after an execution date was set on Thursday by the state’s Republican governor Kay Ivey. Should it go ahead, the anticipated killing would be exceptional not only as only the second time that nitrogen has been used in the US, but also because Miller has already been subjected to a botched execution, which he survived.
Protests and hunger strikes among asylum seekers held in detention centres in preparation for deportation to Rwanda are increasing, the Guardian has learned.
Approximately 55 detainees, including Afghans, Iranians and Kurds, are believed to have staged a 10-hour peaceful protest in the exercise yard at Brook House immigration removal centre, near Gatwick airport from 6pm Tuesday until 4am Wednesday.
In an age of climate crisis and AI, equal treatment is nothing less than essential
In the three decades since I became a lawyer, human rights – once understood as an uncomplicated good, a tool for securing dignity for the vulnerable against abuses by the powerful – have increasingly come under assault. Perhaps never more so than in the current moment: we are constantly talking about human rights, but often in a highly sceptical way. When Liz Truss loudly proclaims “We’ve got to leave the ECHR, abolish the supreme court and abolish the Human Rights Act,” she’s not the fringe voice she might have been in the 1990s. She represents a dangerous current of opinion, as prevalent on parts of the radical left as on the populist right of politics. It seems to be gaining momentum.
As an idealistic youngster, I would have been shocked to know that in 2024 it would be necessary to return to the back-to-basics case, to justify the need for fundamental rights and freedoms. But in a world where facts are made fluid, what were once thought of as core values have become hard to distill and defend. In an atmosphere of intense polarisation, human rights are trashed along all parts of the political spectrum – either as a framework to protect markets, or as a form of undercover socialism. What stands out for me is that the most trenchant critics share a profound nationalism. Nationalists believe that universal human rights – the clue’s in the name – undermine the ability of states to agitate for their narrower interests.
Istanbul, May 2, 2024 — Turkish authorities should not contest the appeal of journalist Barış Terkoğlu after he was sentenced to two years on terrorism-related charges and review the related legislation to prevent retaliatory prosecution against journalists for their critical reporting, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Thursday.
The 13th Istanbul Court of Serious Crimes on Thursday found Terkoğlu, a columnist for the pro-opposition daily Cumhuriyet, guilty of “making targets of those assigned to combat terrorism” and sentenced him to two years in prison, his outlet reported. Terkoğlu, who was not immediately arrested, told CPJ after the verdict that his lawyers would appeal.
“Barış Terkoğlu did not target anyone. He has been found guilty for reporting the facts and analyzing them as a journalist, nothing more,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Turkish authorities should not fight Terkoğlu’s appeal and review the vindictive use of the law article for ‘making targets of those assigned to combat terrorism’ due to continued prosecutions of journalists who report on security forces and judiciary.”
Terkoğlu’s trial began in 2021 after a complaint filed by Akın Gürlek, former head judge of the 14th Istanbul Court of Serious Crimes and current deputy justice minister, citing a 2020 column published in Cumhuriyet and a news story published on the independent news website Odatv, where Terkoğlu previously worked as the news editor.
Terkoğlu pled not guilty at the final hearing on Thursday and said: “Judges, prosecutors, and police are citizens. Therefore, they can be criticized for the actions they take and the decisions they make. Giving them exclusive protection is unconstitutional. I criticize the judiciary in 90% of my articles. That’s one thing, targeting [people] is another.”
Terkoğlu told CPJ that his lawyers assumed he would spend approximately six months in prison if they lost the appeal. “There wouldn’t be any prison time to consider if they would have filed a simple ‘insult’ trial,” he said.
Turkish authorities previously used the article to prosecute a Cumhuriyet journalist for her reporting in 2018.
CPJ emailed the chief prosecutor’s office in Istanbul and the Justice Ministry of Turkey for comment but did not receive a reply.
Janine Jackson interviewed the National Employment Law Project’s Sally Dworak-Fisher about delivery workers for the April 26, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: Less than four months after it came into effect, Seattle is looking to “adjust”—as it’s being described—the app-based worker minimum-payment ordinance calling on companies like Uber and DoorDash to improve labor conditions for employees.
Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson described the ordinance’s impact on the local economy as “catastrophic.” The Seattle Timesreports that the “whiplash reversal comes as both drivers and businesses complained about the added cost of delivery, largely in the form of service charges added by the companies in the wake of the new law”—”in the wake of” being the load-bearing language here.
The story of a recent piece by our next guest is in its headline: “DoorDash and Uber Using Customers as Pawns to Punish Workers—Don’t Fall for It.” So here to help us break down what’s going on is Sally Dworak-Fisher, a senior staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project. She joins us now by phone from Baltimore City. Welcome to CounterSpin, Sally Dworak-Fisher.
Sally Dworak-Fisher: Thank you so much for having me.
JJ: Though more and more people are taking on gig work—for reasons largely to do with the conditions of non-gig work—I think it’s still safe to say that more mainstream news media consumers use app-based delivery systems than work for them. And reporters know what they’re doing when they explain this story by saying, for instance, “Companies like DoorDash have implemented regulatory fees in response to the new law, causing the cost of orders to go up.” What’s being skipped over in that formulation, or that explanation, of what’s happening here, that there was a new law and now costs have gone up? What’s missing there?
SD: Sure. Well, it’s not a surprise that companies might choose to pass on some percentage of new costs to consumers, but they’re by no means required to, and compliance with bedrock pay standards, or any workplace law or social safety net, is part of running a business. If you need to charge a certain amount so you can pay your employee a minimum wage, you don’t normally issue a receipt that says, this is due to the minimum wage law. The practice of specifically pointing the finger at some new law seems really designed to make customers angry at the law, and pit them against the workers. It’s a business choice, it’s not a requirement.
And businesses could choose to, for instance, not pass on the entire cost of the law, or not pass on any of it, if they can afford to do that within their profit margin. So this particular situation, where customers are getting receipts that, in effect, blame the law, seems like a play to pit workers and consumers against one another.
JJ: Absolutely. In your piece that I saw in Common Dreams, you note that charging new service fees is an effort to “tank consumer demand and available work.” What are you getting at there? Why would a company want to draw down consumer demand, and then, more specifically, why would they want to lessen available work?
SD: My point there was just that, in so doing, they can also again create an outcry, a backlash, with workers themselves also saying, “Hey, the law isn’t working as intended. We need to change it.” But, really, it’s a manufactured crisis, and it’s not the law that’s to blame there. It’s really the policy of the business that’s to blame.
JJ: And we don’t see media, at least that I’ve seen, digging into that kind of elision, that kind of skip.
SD: Another interesting thing to note would be, so they add a $5 fee that’s purportedly because of the new legal requirements. But it’ll be interesting to know how much of that fee from all those people is really going through the compliance, versus how much is going to profit. And their data is not easily shared.
JJ: And I wanted to ask you about that data. Companies are saying these new service charges are a necessary counterbalance to increased labor costs. Though according to, at least, the Seattle Times, they have declined to release internal data. So we’re being asked to trust the very companies that fought tooth and nail against this ordinance, against paying workers more. We’re just supposed to trust their explanation of what the impact of that ordinance has been. That is, as you say, an information deficit there.
SD: Yes, and I think that they closely guard their information, and don’t turn it over to policymakers. It’s sort of shadow-boxing, in a way, because they have all the information. So I would hope that policymakers would make them show their work, in effect.
JJ: Or at least make a point of the fact that they’re not; that they’re making assertions based on something that they’re not proving or illustrating. We can call that out.
SD: And that was part of our point, is that this law has only gone into effect two months ago. Just be cognizant of the fact that this is a choice that the companies are making to raise these service fees. And before you go about rushing to judgment on anything, demand the data, and see what’s going on.
JJ: When I spoke with Bama Athreya, who hosts the podcast the Gig, she was saying that there’s a glaring need for a bridge between labor rights advocates and digital rights advocates. Because these companies, they’re not making toasters. Their business model is crucial here, and part of that involves, in fact, data, and that, beyond our regular understanding of workers’ rights, there needs to be a bigger-picture understanding of this new way of doing business.
SD: That dovetails with something that we talk about frequently here, which is the algorithmic control and the gamification of the work. These corporations are really well-versed in touting flexibility, but the day-to-day job of an app-based worker is highly mediated, monitored, controlled by algorithms that detail how much they’ll be paid, when they’ll be paid, when they can work. There’s a whole lot of algorithms and tech that come into play here. But I do just want to say, it doesn’t make them special. These are just new ways of misclassifying workers as independent contractors.
JJ: It’s just a new shine on an old practice.
Another thing that Bama Athreya pointed out was that it’s often presented to us as, “Well, I guess you’re going to have to pay $26 for a cup of coffee, because the workers want to get paid more.” And that’s the pitting workers versus consumers angle that a lot of elite media take.
But also, if we look at other countries, companies like Uber say, “Well golly, if you make us improve our labor practices, I guess we’ll have to”—and then they kick rocks and look sad—“I guess we’ll just have to go out of business.” And then a government says, “Well, yeah, OK, but you still have to follow the law.” And then they say, “Oh, all right, we’ll just follow it.” They can do it.
SD: And I think they’ve admitted that. I believe that the Uber CEO, after California passed AB 5, which is a law regarding who’s an employee and who’s an independent contractor in that state, Uber, I’m pretty sure, was on record saying, “Well, we can comply with any law.”
And, honestly, I think that really gets into, what do we as a society want in terms of our policies? Do we want just any business? Don’t we have minimum wage laws for a reason? If you can’t make it work while still paying a living wage, then consumers aren’t in the business of subsidizing that. I’m sorry, but not every business is entitled to run on the lowest wage possible.
JJ: And I wish a lot of the folks were not saying, out of the same mouth, that capitalism is this wonderful thing where if you build a better mousetrap, then you succeed, and if you don’t, well, you don’t. And that’s why they have to be rewarded, because of the risk they take. When then, at the same time, we’re saying, oh, but if you want to fall afoul of certain basic human rights laws, we’ll subsidize that, and make sure you get to exist anyway. It’s a confusing picture.
SD: I mean, should we bring back child labor?
JJ: Yeah. Hmm. You thought that would be a less interesting question than it turns out that it is.
Let me just ask you, finally, what should we be looking for to happen from public advocates, which we would hope elected officials would be public advocates, and also reporters we would hope would be public advocates. What should they be calling for, and what should they notice if it doesn’t happen? What’s the right move right now?
Sally Dworak-Fisher: “Uber and Lyft, in particular, buy, bully and bamboozle their way into getting legislatures to enact the policies that they favor.”
SD: I think whatever can be done to support the movement. There’s movements across states of app-based workers demanding accountability, and really trying to shine a light on what’s really going on here. I think the more reporting on that, and exposing—you know, every worker should have flexibility and a good job, but the flexibility that’s offered app-based workers is not necessarily the flexibility that a regular reader might assume.
In 2018, NELP issued a report with another organization, called Uber State Interference, and we really identified these ways that Uber and Lyft, in particular, buy, bully and bamboozle their way into getting legislatures to enact the policies that they favor. And now, coming out of the pandemic, as workers are successfully organizing again, like they’ve been doing in Seattle and New York City and Minneapolis, the companies are orchestrating a backlash. So understanding the context of what’s going on, and exposing it, would go a long way in solidarity with the workers.
JJ: We’ve been speaking with Sally Dworak-Fisher from the National Employment Law Project; they’re online at NELP.org. And her piece, “DoorDash and Uber Using Customers as Pawns to Punish Workers—Don’t Fall for It,” can be found at CommonDreams.org. Thank you so much, Sally Dworak-Fisher, for speaking with us this week on CounterSpin.
Asylum seekers are our neighbours, not political pawns for failing politicians. If MPs cannot resist the Rwanda plan, activists will
Laws that are unjust will inevitably be broken. Here is a basic reading of our history, and indeed how numerous rights and freedoms were secured in the first place. Ruled as we are by a desperate man lacking a moral compass, our sinking government has brought forward plans to detain asylum seekers across the UK in preparation for their deportation to Rwanda. After both the European court of human rights and the supreme court declared the government’s scheme unlawful – not least because Paul Kagame’s authoritarian regime could plausibly deport them to the country from which they fled – the government railroaded through legislation, absurdly declaring Rwanda to be safe. Here is the very definition of a law to be disrespected: one drawn up to override the courts and thus the separation of powers, to turn a lie into a legal fact, in support of an unworkable and immoral scheme that imposes pain on the traumatised purely to bolster a prime minister’s imploding administration.
Civil disobedience will take many forms. Asylum seekers will simply avoid reporting to the authorities, disappearing from the system altogether: indeed, the Home Office reports it cannot locate more than six in 10 migrants identified for deportation. But a network of activists across the country is poised to take action. We have lived through a decade of protests, speaking to a growing willingness to take to the streets to defy authority. Social media plays a pivotal role, not least when it comes to migrants’ rights: Anti Raids Network, for example, uses X to promote calls by local groups to mobilise activists to stop deportation raids. One such callout in Solihull yesterday asked for help stopping a deportation van: “There are unmarked enforcement vans in the car park, and we think these people could be at risk of being taken to detention.”
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
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Istanbul, April 29, 2024—Turkish authorities should release reporters Esra Solin Dal, Mehmet Aslan, and Erdoğan Alayumat and end the systematic harassment of Kurdish journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Monday.
On April 23, Turkish authorities took nine people, who local media reported were all Kurdish journalists and media workers, into police custody after conducting house raids in Turkey’s largest city Istanbul, the capital Ankara, and the southeastern city of Şanlıurfa, according to newsreports. Police questioned the journalists about their reporting and their news sources, according to newsreports.
The detainees were denied access to their lawyers until the following day, according to a report by the Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA), a local press freedom group. Their lawyers were also not informed of the accusations against their clients due to a court order of secrecy on the investigation, according to the report.
Istanbul prosecutors transferredDal and Aslan, who work for the Mezopotamya News Agency (MA), as well as Alayumat, a former MA report, to a court, asking for their arrests.
In the early hours of April 27, an Istanbul courtarrested Dal, Aslan, and Alayumat, pending trial on suspicion of terrorist activity.
Dal was strip searched as she was processed at the Bakırköy Women’s Prison in Istanbul and will file a criminal complaint via her lawyers, reportssaid.
The other six detainees were released under judicial control, including Doğan Kaynak, another former reporter for MA, and Enes Sezgin Özgür and Şirin Ermiş, who are both media workers for the daily Yeni Yaşam newspaper in Istanbul.
CPJ could not confirm the identities of Saliha Aras, Yeşim Alıcı, and Beste Argat Balcı, who were mentioned only as “journalist,” “a worker of the Free Press,” and “media worker,” respectively, in the reports.
Judicial control involves the obligation to report regularly to a police station and a ban on foreign travel.
“Turkish authorities continue to harass members of the media with mass raids and consistently fail to provide credible evidence to back up their accusations of terrorism against them. The only secret that the courts are hiding with their orders of secrecy surrounding their investigations is their lack of proof of any wrongdoing. Once more, Kurdish journalists are being forced to spend days in jail being questioned about their professional activities,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative. “Turkish authorities should immediately release Esra Solin Dal, Mehmet Aslan, and Erdoğan Alayumat, overturn the judicial control measures issued against other journalists and media workers who were swept up in the raid, and stop this harassment, which only tarnishes Turkey’s global reputation in terms of press freedom.”
Readers on the harm caused to those who remain incarcerated despite the abolition of IPP sentences in 2012
I am heartened by two pieces on indeterminate sentences that you published last week (Tommy Nicol was kind and friendly – a beloved brother. Why did he die in prison on a ‘99-year’ sentence?, 24 April; Editorial, 26 April). The suicide of Tommy Nicol starkly highlights how unjust imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentences always were and remain (although abolished for new cases 12 years ago). As a former prison chaplain and doctoral researcher into pastoral care for those serving IPP sentences, I witnessed firsthand their impact on the mental wellbeing of those who were, in many cases, life-wounded souls themselves.
Thanks to the Guardian and campaign groups such as the United Group for Reform of IPP, I am hoping that this judicial scandal can achieve the same traction in the public consciousness that the Post Office scandal has. While the Commons justice committee report into IPP sentences in 2022 strongly recommended resentencing those still in custody, MPs on both sides of the house lack the moral courage to take this humane step to right a blatant injustice. Some time ago, as a Labour party member, I wrote to Keir Starmer seeking clarification on his position regarding the IPP scandal. Disappointingly, but unsurprisingly, my epistle was met with silence.
The US Department of Justice is being urged to condemn and cease its reliance on the “Insular Cases” — a series of US Supreme Court opinions on US territories, which have been labelled racist.
Senate Judiciary Committee chair Dick Durbin called them “a stain on the history of our country and its highest court”.
The territories include the Northern Marianas, Guam, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and American Samoa.
A letter signed by 43 members of Congress was sent to the Department of Justice this month.
The letter follows a filing by the Justice Department last month, in which it stated that “aspects of the Insular Cases’ reasoning and rhetoric, which invoke racist stereotypes, are indefensible and repugnant”.
But the court has yet to reject the doctrine wholly and expressly.
US House of Representatives’ Natural Resources Committee ranking member Raúl M. Grijalva said the Justice Department had made strides in the right direction by criticising “aspects” of the Insular Cases.
‘Reject these racist decisions’
“But it is time for DOJ to go further and unequivocally reject these racist decisions; much as it has for other Supreme Court opinions that relied on racist stereotypes that do not abide by the Constitution’s command of equality and respect for rule of law,” he said.
Congresswoman Stacey E. Plaskett said the Justice Department had a crucial opportunity to take the lead in rejecting the Insular Cases.
“For far too long these decisions have justified a racist and colonial legal framework that has structurally disenfranchised the 3.6 million residents of US territories and denied them equal constitutional rights.”
Senate Judiciary Committee chair Durbin said the decisions still impact on those who live in US territories to this day.
“We need to acknowledge that these explicitly racist decisions were wrongly decided, and I encourage the Department of Justice to say so.”
In recent weeks, Virgin Islands Governor Albert Bryan, Jr and Manuel Quilichini, president of the Colegio de Abogados y Abogadas de Puerto Rico (Puerto Rico Bar Association), have also sent letters to DOJ urging the Department to condemn the Insular Cases.
Quilichini wrote to DOJ earlier this month, and this followed a 2022 resolution by the American Bar Association and similar letters from the Virgin Islands Bar Association and New York State Bar Association to the Justice Department.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
Report concludes state sheltered soldiers from prosecution for Troubles-era crimes, as amnesty legislation comes into force
Britain’s reputation will be severely damaged by the Northern Ireland “legacy” act, an international panel of human rights experts has warned while calling for the government to scrap moves to grant conditional amnesties for Troubles-era crimes.
The warning is being made as the legislation comes into force on Wednesday, offering soldiers and paramilitaries a limited form of immunity from prosecution for Troubles-related offences for those who cooperate with a new body aimed at truth recovery.
Coroner condemns ‘inhumane’ imprisonment for public protection sentences that have no end date for release
A senior coroner has condemned the “inhumane” and “indefensible” treatment of a man who killed himself 17 years into an indefinite prison sentence. Tom Osborne, the senior coroner for Milton Keynes, said Scott Rider had given up all hope of release before he took his own life at HMP Woodhill in June 2022.
He had been serving an imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentence after being convicted of grievous bodily harm in 2005. The sentence had a minimum term of 23 months but no end date.
Amnesty International has released its annual report assessing human rights in 155 countries. The report highlights Israel’s assault on Gaza with evidence of war crimes continuing to mount, as well as U.S. failures to denounce rights violations committed by Israel. It also points to Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine, and the rise of authoritarianism and massive rights violations in Sudan, Ethiopia and Myanmar. We speak to Agnès Callamard, the organization’s secretary general, who warns “the international system is on the brink of collapse” and decries the failure of rights mechanisms and Israel’s top ally, the United States, to rein in its “unprecedented” assault on Gaza.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Rights chief also warns Britain will be ‘judged harshly by history for its failure to help prevent civilian slaughter in Gaza’
The UK has been accused by Amnesty International of “deliberately destabilising” human rights on the global stage for its own political ends.
In its annual global report, released today, the organisation said Britain was weakening human rights protections nationally and globally, amid a near-breakdown of international law.
His sister says the only person he ever presented a serious threat to was himself, yet he was given an indeterminate sentence for stealing a car. The psychological torture was impossible to endure
When Tommy Nicol told his sister Donna Mooney about his prison sentence, she didn’t believe him. It was May 2009 and he had stolen yet another car. Nicol was a petty criminal, always nicking motors, and was rarely out of jail. “He said: ‘They’ve given me a 99-year sentence.’ I said: ‘That’s ridiculous.’ I thought he was confused.” Over the next few years, Nicol occasionally mentioned the sentence in letters to Mooney and asked her to look into it. She admits she didn’t give it much thought at the time.
In 2015, Nicol killed himself in prison. He was 37. It was only then that Mooney discovered he had been right all along. Nicol had a four-year tariff (the minimum amount of time he could serve in jail) and an indeterminate sentence, known as imprisonment for public protection. IPP is also called a 99-year sentence because people serving one can, technically, be jailed for 99 years. When they are released, it is on a 99-year licence, which means they can be recalled to prison at any time in their life for even minor breaches, such as being late for a probation appointment (although the Parole Board will consider whether to terminate the licence 10 years after first release).
The European Parliament on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a new law that prevents the import and distribution of goods made with forced labor, a move that Uyghur advocates said would help clamp down on China’s use of forced labor in far western Xinjiang.
The Forced Labour Regulation, which places the burden of proof on the EU rather than on companies, was approved in a 555-6 vote, with 45 abstentions.
The law will allow authorities in EU member states and the European Commission to investigate suspicious goods, supply chains and manufacturers. Products they determine to be made with forced labor cannot be sold in the EU, including online, and will be confiscated at the border.
Manufacturers of banned goods must withdraw their products from the EU single market and donate, recycle or destroy them. Companies that fail to comply can be fined.
Uyghur activists welcomed the measure, although it does not specifically ban products made by Uyghur forced labor, and some pointed out shortcomings.
“The passage of this legislation also sends a powerful message to the Chinese companies doing business in Europe that have continuously benefited from the Uyghur forced labor despite repeated warnings,” said Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, or WUC.
The EU’s 27 countries must now approve the regulation for it to enter into force, a measure that is largely a formality. After ratification, they will have three years to implement the law.
Missed opportunity
Zumretay Arkin, WUC’s director of global advocacy, called the parliament’s vote positive, but said the EU “missed a crucial opportunity to agree on an instrument that could meaningfully address forced labor when the government is the perpetrator, like in the Uyghur region in China.”
“We welcome this milestone but stress that all related guidance, guidelines and considerations of when to investigate cases be created in a way that ensures the regulation can effectively ban products made with state-imposed forced labor,” she said in a statement from the London-based Anti-Slavery International.
Absent from the law are key provisions that would have heightened its effectiveness, including a method of redress for forced labor victims, said the rights group which works to end modern slavery.
A similar law took effect in the United States in 2021 banning the import of goods made using forced labor in Xinjiang, where the U.S. government has said China is committing genocide against the 11 million mostly Muslim Uyghurs.
Beijing has denied accusations of human rights violations in Xinjiang, despite substantial evidence that it has detained an estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in “re-education” camps, where they received training in various skills and were forced to work in factories making everything from chemicals and clothing to car parts.
The European Parliament passed a resolution in June 2022 saying China’s treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim groups in Xinjiang amounted to crimes against humanity and held a “serious risk of genocide.”
‘Less teeth’
The EU law has “significantly less teeth” than the U.S. Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, but the crux will be the way it’s implemented by investigating authorities, said Adrian Zenz, senior fellow and director in China studies at the Washington-based Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
The EU regulation contains a provision that the EU must align itself according to the forced labor definitions and standards of the International Labour Organization, or ILO, which has published updated guidelines containing provisions capable of targeting Uyghur forced labor in Xinjiang, Zenz said.
One of the new provisions is that state-imposed forced labor is best assessed as a risk rather than a specific instance. This points to the fact that state-imposed forced labor creates a pervasive risk in an entire targeted region that is difficult, if not impossible, to assess in particular situations such as in places where there is no freedom to speak out, he said.
“There’s the possibility that the [European] Commission in its investigation … could make a finding of forced labor without having to prove every connection to every supply chain, by determining that this region is not cooperating, is not providing accurate information, and in line with what the ILO guidelines say about state-imposed forced labor, that it’s best assessed as a systemic risk,” he said.
“That increases the scope of being more effective in its implementation.”
The approval of the Forced Labour Regulation comes ahead of a European Parliament vote expected this week on the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which creates a legal liability for companies relating to environmental and human rights violations within their supply chains.
“Together, these laws will send a strong message to workers around the world that the EU will not stand for forced labor,” said Anti-Slavery International.
Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Alim Seytoff for RFA Uyghur and Roseanne Gerin for RFA.
The Council of Europe’s human rights watchdog has condemned Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda scheme, saying it raises “major issues about the human rights of asylum seekers and the rule of law”.
The body’s human rights commissioner, Michael O’Flaherty, said the bill, expected to be signed into law on Tuesday after passing its parliamentary stages on Monday night, was a grave concern and should not be used to remove asylum seekers or infringe on judges’ independence.
Historic hearing will receive submissions from people whose human rights have been affected by climate change
Julian Medina comes from a long line of fishers in the north of Colombia’s Gulf of Morrosquillo who use small-scale and often traditional methods to catch species such as mackerel, tuna and cojinúa.
Medina went into business as a young man but was drawn back to his roots, and ended up leading a fishing organisation. For years he has campaigned against the encroachment of fossil fuel companies, pollution and overfishing, which are destroying the gulf’s delicate ecosystem and people’s livelihoods.
This week on CounterSpin: The long-fought effort to get legal acknowledgement of the abuse of Iraqi detainees during the Iraq War is coming to a federal court in Virginia, with Al-Shimari v. CACI. Since the case was first filed in 2008, military contractor CACI has pushed some 20 times to have it dismissed.
Time magazine unwittingly told the tale with the recent headline: “Abu Ghraib Military Contractor Trial Set to Start 20 Years after Shocking Images of Abuse.” That’s the thing, people had been reporting the horrific treatment of Iraqi detainees at the Baghdad-area prison and elsewhere, but it was only when those photos were released—photos the Defense Department tried hard to suppress—that it was so undeniable it had to be acknowledged.
But still: When Australian TV later broadcast new unseen images, the Washington Postofficially sighed that they weren’t worth running because they did not depict “previously unknown” abuse. Post executive editor Len Downie had a different answer, saying in an online chat that the images were “so shocking and in such bad taste, especially the extensive nudity, that they are not publishable in our newspaper.” Because that what officially sanctioned torture is, above all, right? Distasteful.
We got a reading on the case last year from Baher Azmy, legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Also on the show: Historians tell us that the Cold War is over, but the framing persists in news media that love a simple good guy vs. bad guy story, even as who the good and the bad guys are shifts over time. Telling history through actual human beings makes it harder to come up with slam-dunk answers, but can raise questions that are ultimately more useful for those seeking a peaceful planet. A new book provides a sort of case study; it’s about Ted Hall, who, as a young man, shared nuclear secrets from Los Alamos with the then–Soviet Union. Veteran investigative journalist Dave Lindorff has reported for numerous outlets and is author of Marketplace Medicine and This Can’t Be Happening, among other titles. We talked with him about his latest, Spy for No Country: The Story of Ted Hall, the Teenage Atomic Spy Who May Have Saved the World, which is out now from Prometheus Books.
Report says thousands of people held in little-reported facilities where authorities are violating human rights on a large scale
The US and UK are complicit in the detention of thousands of people, including British nationals, in camps and facilities in north-east Syria where disease, torture and death are rife, according to Amnesty International.
In a report, the charity says the western-backed region’s autonomous authorities are responsible for large-scale human rights violations against people held since the end of the ground war against Islamic State (IS) more than five years ago.
Rishi Sunak’s authority suffers blow as several Conservatives vote against bill, which clears first Commons hurdle with 383 votes to 67
At 12.30pm a transport minister will respond to an urgent question in the Commons tabled by Labour on job losses in the rail industry. That means the debate on the smoking ban will will not start until about 1.15pm.
Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, is one of the Britons speaking at the National Conservatism conference in Brussels starting today. The conference, which features hardline rightwingers from around the world committed to the NatCons’ ‘faith, flag and family’ brand of conservatism, is going ahead despite two venues refusing to host them at relatively short notice.
The current UK government doesn’t have the political will to take on the ECHR and hasn’t laid the ground work for doing so.
And so it’s no surprise that recent noises in this direction are easily dismissed as inauthentic.
Any attempt to include a plan for ECHR withdrawal in a losing Conservative election manifesto risks setting the cause back a generation.
