radiofree.asia

Category: Middle East and North Africa

  • Sudan’s warring factions using starvation as weapon, experts say

    Special rapporteurs working for UN warn famine is imminent and over 25 million people need urgent help

    Human rights experts working for the United Nations have accused Sudan’s warring parties of using starvation as a war weapon, amid mounting warnings of imminent famine in the African country.

    Sudan plunged into chaos in April last year when simmering tensions between the country’s military and a notorious paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere in the country.

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

  • Swedish EU diplomat Johan Floderus freed from Iranian jail in prisoner swap

    Iranian-Swedish citizen Saeed Azizi also exchanged for Hamid Noury, who was serving life in Sweden for role in death of political prisoners

    Johan Floderus, the Swedish EU diplomat held in captivity for two years in Iran, has been freed and has arrived home, the Swedish prime minister has announcedgreeted by the prime minister and his delighted and relieved family and friends.

    Ulf Kristersson said on Saturday that the Iranian lifer Hamid Noury was being exchanged for Johan Floderus and the Iranian-Swedish citizen Saeed Azizi. He arrived back in Sweden later that evening.

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

  • Children and elderly people tortured at Syria military prison, Paris court told

    Three top officers close to Bashar al-Assad are on trial in absentia over the deaths of a student and his father

    Witnesses have told a Paris court how children and elderly people considered enemies of the ruling Syrian regime were tortured in a notorious military prison, at the trial of three high-ranking officers close to the country’s leader, Bashar al-Assad.

    The three are being tried in absentia for crimes against humanity and war crimes in connection with the deaths of two French-Syrian dual nationals, Patrick Dabbagh, a 20-year-old student, and his father, 48.

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

  • Whistleblowers allege widespread abuses at Israeli detention camp

    Sources describe Palestinian inmates being beaten, kept shackled to hospital beds or made to stand for hours

    Prisoners held at an Israeli detention camp in the Negev desert are being subjected to widespread physical and mental abuses, with at least one reported case of a man having his limb amputated as a result of injuries sustained from constant handcuffing, according to two whistleblowers who worked at the site.

    The sources described harrowing treatment of detainees at the Israeli Sde Teiman camp, which holds Palestinians from Gaza and suspected Hamas militants, including inmates regularly being kept shackled to hospital beds, blindfolded and forced to wear nappies.

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

  • Whistleblowers allege widespread abuses at Israeli detention camp

    Sources describe Palestinian inmates being beaten, kept shackled to hospital beds or made to stand for hours

    Prisoners held at an Israeli detention camp in the Negev desert are being subjected to widespread physical and mental abuses, with at least one reported case of a man having his limb amputated as a result of injuries sustained from constant handcuffing, according to two whistleblowers who worked at the site.

    The sources described harrowing treatment of detainees at the Israeli Sde Teiman camp, which holds Palestinians from Gaza and suspected Hamas militants, including inmates regularly being kept shackled to hospital beds, blindfolded and forced to wear nappies.

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

  • Summary of advice that UK arms sales to Israel not unlawful to be released

    Andrew Mitchell preparing to share details of assessment that there is no clear risk in breaching international human law

    The British government is preparing to publish a summary of its legal advice stating there are no clear risks that selling arms to Israel will lead to a serious breach of international humanitarian law (IHL).

    In a pre-prepared concession to the business select committee, the deputy foreign secretary, Andrew Mitchell, said: “In view of the strength of feeling in the IHL assessment process, I will look to see what more detail we could offer in writing on the IHL assessments in relation to Israel and Gaza both in process and substance.”

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

  • No signal from helicopter that crashed killing Iran’s president, Turkish minister says

    Initial investigation by rescue group finds ageing aircraft either did not have transponder fitted or had it turned off

    The helicopter that crashed killing the Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, and the foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, either did not have a transponder fitted or had it turned off, according to an initial investigation by the Turkish rescue group that found the wreckage.

    The Turkish transport minister, Abdulkadir Uraloğlu, told reporters that on hearing news of the crash, Turkish authorities had checked for a signal from the helicopter’s transponder that broadcasts height and location information. “But unfortunately, [we think] most likely the transponder system was turned off or that the helicopter did not have one,” he said.

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

  • Ebrahim Raisi obituary

    Ruthless prosecutor behind thousands of executions who rose through the theocratic ranks to become the president of Iran

    The career of Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, who has been killed in a helicopter crash aged 63, was defined by violent events. His initiation into politics was triggered by the 1979 Iranian revolution, one of the most cataclysmic and epoch-shaping events of the late 20th century, which unfolded with headline-grabbing drama as Raisi was just turning 18.

    Given the heady fervour of that revolutionary period, with daily mass street demonstrations eventually leading to the toppling of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the country’s once seemingly invincible western-allied monarch, followed by the return from exile of the messianic cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to ecstatic acclaim, it is perhaps no surprise that a militant, impressionable young activist was sucked into the political system that took shape in the aftermath, was moulded by it – and later participated in some of its more unsavoury actions.

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

  • Assad officials face landmark Paris trial over killing of student and father

    Prosecution of three high-ranking Syrian officials to be tried in absentia could pave way for president’s case

    At midnight on 3 November 2013, five Syrian officials dragged arts and humanities student Patrick Dabbagh from his home in the Mezzeh district of Damascus.

    The following day, at the same hour, the same men, including a representative of the Syrian air force’s intelligence unit, returned with a dozen soldiers to arrest the 20-year-old’s father Mazzen.

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

  • ‘Art-washing’? Unease as British cultural institutions lend lustre to Saudi trade push

    Campaigners say move to use the arts to reinforce economic ties with Riyadh may help to launder Gulf state’s human rights record

    It was an unusual gig for YolanDa Brown, the saxophonist and composer who this week performed high above the clouds for a UK delegation on a private British Airways plane bound for Saudi Arabia.

    The flight was part of a trade offensive for British businesses and institutions in Riyadh, with Brown’s performance part of a new focus for Saudi-UK relations – international arts.

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

  • Red Cross and Foreign Office to discuss plan to visit Palestinians in Israeli detention

    ICRC is denied access to prisoners in what is said to be breach of Geneva conventions but critics say UK plan may weaken rule of law

    Red Cross officials are to hold talks with the UK over a Foreign Office plan to visit Palestinian detainees held by Israel. Critics say this bypasses a duty on Israel under the Geneva conventions to give the Red Cross access to detainees.

    Israel has suspended the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from access to Palestinian detainees since the Hamas attack on 7 October, and says it will not rescind the policy until Hamas grants access to Israeli hostages.

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

  • UN denies Gaza death toll of women and children has been revised down

    Spokesperson says confusion results from Gaza health ministry’s new way of classifying those not yet fully identified

    The UN has denied that the estimated death toll of women and children in the war in Gaza has been revised downward, pointing towards a confusion between the total numbers of dead bodies recorded, and the number of those who have so far been fully identified.

    After the Gaza health ministry’s revised totals of those killed first appeared on the website of the UN’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (Ocha), they were quickly seized on as proof by pro-Israel media and commentators that the UN had previously been exaggerating the toll.

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

  • Could new US sanctions threaten future of West Bank settlements? | Emma Graham-Harrison and Quique Kierszenbaum

    Joe Biden’s latest executive order gives scope to target the finances of Israeli politicians and businesses linked to extremists

    Escalating US sanctions on violent settlers, initially taken as a mostly political rebuke to extremists, are now seen by some inside Israel as a potential threat to the financial viability of all Israeli settlements and companies in the occupied West Bank.

    The Biden administration’s new controls on a handful of men and organisations linked to attacks on Palestinian civilians, first announced in February then expanded twice in March and April, have generally been treated in Israel and beyond more as a humiliating public censure of a close ally than as a major political shift.

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  • Why have student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza gone global?

    Ceasefire and divestment calls have spread beyond US campuses, with more expected as Rafah offensive begins

    University campuses around the world have been the stage of a growing number of protests by students demanding academic institutions divest from companies supplying arms to Israel.

    The protests, which first spread across college campuses in the US, have reached universities in the UK, the rest of Europe, as well as Lebanon and India.

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

  • Why hasn’t the US called for an investigation into mass graves in Gaza? | Arwa Mahdawi

    Nothing screams ‘covering up war crimes’ like insisting that there should absolutely not be an independent investigation

    Did you know that the Palestinians are the very first people in the world to ethnically cleanse and mass murder themselves? I know it sounds weird, but – as American and Israeli politicians keep reminding us – these are “savages” that we are talking about here. Normal rules don’t apply, you’ve got to follow the Palestine Rules.

    The Palestine Rules dictate you do the following: ignore every international agency if that agency says anything remotely critical about Israel. Certainly don’t listen to international aid agencies like Oxfam when they argue that the government of Israel is “deliberately blocking and/or undermining the international humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip”. Nope, the fact that babies in Gaza are dying of malnutrition is all their fault. The fact that children in Gaza are starving at the fastest rate the world has ever known is nothing to do with Israel, it’s the fault of those pesky Palestinians.

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

  • Human rights groups and diplomats condemn Iraq’s anti-LGBT law

    US state department says law could drive away foreign investment while David Cameron described it as ‘dangerous and worrying’

    Human rights groups and diplomats have criticised a law passed by the Iraqi parliament over the weekend that would impose heavy prison sentences on gay and transgender people.

    The US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said in a statement that the law on passed Saturday “threatens those most at risk in Iraqi society” and “can be used to hamper free-speech and expression”. He warned that the legislation could drive away foreign investment.

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

  • Iranian women violently dragged from streets by police amid hijab crackdown

    Video evidence shows multiple arrests after regime launched new draconian campaign against women and girls

    Harrowing first-hand accounts of women being dragged from the streets of Iran and detained by security services have emerged as human rights groups say country’s hijab rules have been brutally enforced since the country’s drone strikes on Israel on 13 April.

    A new campaign, called Noor (“light” in Persian), was announced the same day the Iranian regime launched drone attacks against Israel, to crack down on “violations” of the country’s draconian hijab rules, which dictate that all women must cover their heads in public.

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

  • UN rights chief ‘horrified’ by reports of mass graves at two Gaza hospitals

    Spokesperson says some bodies allegedly had their hands tied while others were bound and stripped

    The UN human rights chief, Volker Türk, says he is “horrified” by reports of mass graves containing hundreds of bodies at two of Gaza’s largest hospitals.

    Palestinian civil defence teams began exhuming bodies from a mass grave outside the Nasser hospital complex in Khan Younis last week after Israeli troops withdrew.

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

  • US and UK complicit in detentions at Syrian camps where torture rife, says Amnesty

    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.

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

  • UK Foreign Office holding secret talks with Sudan’s RSF paramilitary group

    Exclusive: Rights groups denounce negotiations with Rapid Support Forces, accused of ethnic cleansing and war crimes

    Foreign Office officials are holding secret talks with the paramilitary group that has been waging a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Sudan for the past year.

    News that the British government and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are engaged in clandestine negotiations has prompted warnings that such talks risk legitimising the notorious militia – which continues to commit multiple war crimes – while undermining Britain’s moral credibility in the region.

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

  • ‘Correct a black mark in US history’: former prisoners of Abu Ghraib get day in court

    Jury trial against military contractor CACI over ‘sadistic, blatant and wanton abuses’ comes 20 years after scandal broke

    The first trial to contend with the post-9/11 abuse of detainees in US custody begins on Monday, in a case brought by three men who were held in the US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

    The jury trial, in a federal court in Virginia, comes nearly 20 years to the day that the photographs depicting torture and abuse in the prison were first revealed to the public, prompting an international scandal that came to symbolize the treatment of detainees in the US “war on terror”.

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

  • Keith Carmichael obituary

    Human rights campaigner who founded the charity Redress following his unlawful imprisonment and torture in Saudi Arabia

    Questions were asked in the House of Commons after Keith Carmichael disappeared into a Saudi Arabian jail in November 1981. His case was repeatedly raised by MPs and peers as news of his brutal mistreatment filtered out. It was not until he was released without charge two and half years later, however, that the extent of the torture he had endured became public knowledge.

    Carmichael, who has died aged 90, was held in solitary confinement for three months, deprived of food and sleep, beaten on his knees and feet, sexually assaulted, shackled in leg irons, suffered a fractured spine and detained in rat-infested cells. He was also threatened with crucifixion and electrocution if he did not confess to numerous crimes (including leaving Saudi Arabia illegally, spying and criticising the royal family), which he refused to do.

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

  • Europe’s Gaza betrayal has broken the trust of millions of people in the global south | Shada Islam

    By seemingly giving carte blanche to Israel, the EU has sacrificed hard-won credibility with civil society in Africa, Asia and the Middle East

    The European Union’s failure to hold Israel to account for violations of international law in Gaza has blown a gaping hole through its claims to be a values-based defender of international rules, democracy and human rights. Accusations of double standards have come hard and fast from governments in the global south, with many contrasting Europe’s unequivocal condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine with its reluctance to call out Israel’s devastation of Gaza.

    “Rarely will anyone soon in the global south listen when western politicians insist on international law,” the Middle East analyst Amro Ali argued recently. This is the kind of observation that causes justifiable concern in Brussels.

    Shada Islam is a Brussels-based commentator on EU affairs

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

  • Bahrain’s king takes activists by surprise with pardon for at least 1,500 prisoners

    Released detainees include some jailed for political reasons and is UK ally’s biggest amnesty since Arab spring

    Bahrain has unconditionally released more than 1,500 prisoners, including political detainees, in the biggest royal pardon since the 2011 Arab spring uprising.

    The amnesty followed years of campaigning inside the country and by international human rights groups but came as a complete surprise to activists.

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

  • Israel’s security at core of German foreign policy due to Holocaust, ICJ hears

    Nicaragua asks UN’s highest court to halt German weapons sales to Israel, alleging it is breaching obligation to prevent genocide

    Germany has said Israel’s security is at “the core” of its foreign policy because of the history of the Holocaust, but denied accusations at the UN’s highest court that is aiding genocide in Gaza by arming Israel.

    Nicaragua has brought a case against Germany at the international court of justice (ICJ) urging judges to order a halt to German weapons sales to Israel, alleging it is in breach of its obligation to prevent genocide and ensure respect of international humanitarian law.

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

  • Israel’s security at core of German foreign policy due to Holocaust, ICJ hears

    Nicaragua asks UN’s highest court to halt German weapons sales to Israel, alleging it is breaching obligation to prevent genocide

    Germany has said Israel’s security is at “the core” of its foreign policy because of the history of the Holocaust, but denied accusations at the UN’s highest court that is aiding genocide in Gaza by arming Israel.

    Nicaragua has brought a case against Germany at the international court of justice (ICJ) urging judges to order a halt to German weapons sales to Israel, alleging it is in breach of its obligation to prevent genocide and ensure respect of international humanitarian law.

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

  • Majority of voters in UK back banning arms sales to Israel, poll finds

    Exclusive: YouGov survey indicates loss of support among people in Britain for Israel’s war in Gaza

    A majority of voters in Britain back a ban on arms sales to Israel, according to a YouGov poll.

    One of the first up-to-date assessments of whether Israel is losing public support in key allied states, the research also suggests most people believe the Israeli government is violating human rights in Gaza.

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

  • Children among cancer patients fearing being sent back to Gaza by Israel

    Moves to deport those receiving care in East Jerusalem have been called ‘a deliberate risk to innocent lives’

    Cancer patients from Gaza, including children, are living in a state of limbo in a hospital in East Jerusalem after Israeli authorities threatened to send them back.

    The Guardian was given access to the Augusta Victoria hospital, where at least 22 patients from Gaza in urgent need of advanced cancer treatment are living in fear of deportation. As with numerous others, they received authorisation prior to Hamas’s 7 October attack to receive medical care outside the strip, due to the inadequate facilities in Gaza.

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

  • MPs and peers sign letter urging UK government to ban arms sales to Israel

    Ministers under growing pressure to act amid signs Israel intends to ignore UN ceasefire resolution

    Parliamentary pressure is building on the UK government to ban arms sales to Israel, amid signs that Israel intends to ignore the UN security council resolution passed this week calling on all sides to commit to a ceasefire.

    A letter signed by more than 130 parliamentarians to the foreign secretary, David Cameron, highlights action taken by other countries, most recently Canada, which last week announced it would halt all arms exports to Israel.

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

  • UN rights expert report to call for Israel arms embargo over ‘acts of genocide’

    Special rapporteur will tell human rights council Israel’s actions ‘reveal an intent to physically destroy Palestinians as a group’

    A UN human rights expert will deliver a report on Tuesday saying that Israel has carried out acts of genocide in Gaza and should be placed under an arms embargo.

    Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said in her report there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that Israel was carrying out three of the five acts defined as genocide: killing Palestinians, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, and “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction” of the population in whole or in part.

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