Tribunal hears there were grounds to suspect the then 15-year-old had been groomed as a child bride
Police should have helped Shamima Begum return to Britain after she joined Islamic State in Syria because there were grounds to suspect she had been groomed as a child bride, a court has heard.
Samantha Knights KC told a tribunal that the police had an obligation to investigate whether Begum, who was 15 when she left the UK, was a victim of human trafficking, and then help her return if she was.
Activists accuse state forces of deploying heavy weaponry, as attacks on Kurdish areas intensify
Iran’s repression of anti-regime protests appears to have entered a dangerous new phase, with activists accusing state forces of deploying heavy weapons and helicopters and a UN official describing the situation as “critical”.
A nationwide uprising has convulsed the country since the death in September of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was allegedly beaten into a coma by the Islamic Republic’s “morality police” after they arrested her for wearing a headscarf they deemed inappropriate.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Harassment of climate summit delegates and holding pen for protesters mar country’s attempt to polish international reputation
An empty pen designed to contain protesters in the middle of the desert, harassment and surveillance of Cop27 delegates (including evidence that the official conference app could spy on them), food and water shortages, and widespread problems with accommodation have all served to undermine the Egyptian government’s attempts to use the climate talk to bolster its international image.
Belgian politician Séverine de Laveleye said she was briefly detained by Egyptian security forces while entering the conference centre simply for carrying badges depicting some of Egypt’s 65,000 political prisoners, including British-Egyptian democracy activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah. “It’s clear that human rights aren’t even respected at the heart of the Cop,” she said. “Sisi’s Egypt is one of repression.”
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Jonathan Wilson raises the prospect that football in its current iteration – a sportswashing mechanism used by states with no regard for human life or rights – might suddenly disappear (“Just like the hat, football’s grip could suddenly go out of fashion after Qatar”, Sport). This would be a cause not for regret but for celebration and can surely be hastened by adopting a concept used to fight apartheid South Africa: no normal sport in an abnormal society. Thousands of migrant workers have died for the World Cup to be staged by a misogynistic and homophobic state that values dollars over deaths, and the society of the spectacle over the substance of humane practice.
Darryl Accone
Johannesburg, South Africa
I admire Joanna Cannon’s stance in deciding for moral reasons not to watch the World Cup (“To watch it would make me complicit. A passive approver of homophobia”, Comment), but wonder whether she will also be boycotting her beloved Liverpool’s games against Newcastle United, who are owned by the equally unpleasant regime of Saudi Arabia?
Ken Gambles
Knaresborough, North Yorkshire
This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh follows decade-long crackdown on civil society in Egypt
“Honestly, what I want is to be in Sharm el-Sheikh and just scream,” said Amr Magdi of Human Rights Watch. Like dozens of other prominent human rights defenders, researchers and environmentalists, Magdi has been unable to attend Cop27 as he is exiled from Egypt because of his work.
“I just want to tell everyone about the injustice happening in Egypt. I can’t do it personally and I’m trying to do it with my work. I’m even helping others who are able to travel there to do this,” he said.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
By supplying military drones to Russia, the mullahs’ regime is killing at home and away. The national team’s presence in Qatar is sickening and shameful
Some governments, such as Syria and Myanmar, kill their own people. Some, such as Russia, kill people in other countries, as in Ukraine. Iran’s government is doing both, home and away.
Now, pressed into action by this murderous regime, Iran’s national football team is about to play England, Wales and the US in the 2022 World Cup – as if nothing untoward were happening. This is not OK. In truth, it’s shameful.
Video apparently shows crowds marching in Zahedan to condemn 30 September massacre of activists
Thousands of Iranians protested in the restive south-east to mark a 30 September crackdown by security forces known as “Bloody Friday” as the country’s rulers faced persistent nationwide unrest.
Amnesty International said security forces unlawfully killed at least 66 people in September after firing at protesters in Zahedan, capital of flashpoint Sistan and Baluchistan province. Authorities said dissidents had provoked the clashes.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Concern over host country’s human rights record and stance on gay rights finds some boycotting tournament, while others plan to attend but ‘speak their mind’
Andy Payne has supported England at every World Cup bar one for the past 40 years – but when it was announced that Qatar would host in 2022, he hesitated. “There’s so many people, including me, quite rightly having major moral thoughts on all this,” he says.
In the end, he and his wife, Kirsty, decided to go – but his usual T-shirt and shorts will be adorned with a bright rainbow armband, while Kirsty will wear a large rainbow hat.
Global spotlight on host country has heightened scrutiny of human rights record, with Biden due to meet Sisi
As Egyptian officials strive to control the narrative and isolate the case of the detained British Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, pressure is mounting on world leaders at Cop27 to acknowledge Egypt’s poor human rights record and raise his case.
The Egyptian authorities have engaged in a sweeping public relations campaign to try to discredit Abd el-Fattah, including a digital campaign depicting him as a threat to national security.
Complaint, which prosecutor has yet to accept, raises risk of Sanaa Seif’s detention during Cop27
The sister of the jailed hunger striker Alaa Abd el-Fattah has been informed that a pro-government lawyer has filed a case against her with the Egyptian public prosecutor accusing her of espionage and “spreading false news”.
The news comes a day after Sanaa Seif spoke at an event at the Cop27 climate summit being held in Egypt, which was widely reported on. The case accuses her of “conspiring with foreign agencies against the Egyptian state, foreign agitation, and incitement against the Egyptian state and its institutions, and deliberately spreading false news.”
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Deep chasm emerges between long-time polluting rich states and developing countries on second full day of summit
Money! Money! Money! dominated the second full day of Cop27, with a deep chasm emerging between long-time polluting rich states and developing countries that need finance to deal with devastating extreme weather events while also cutting emissions.
Meanwhile, Egypt will realise it cannot hold such a significant international conference without its dire human rights record being thrust into the limelight.
The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, urged the global north to follow the EU’s example of committing climate finance to the global south.
A report by the renowned climate economist Nicholas Stern showed $2tn a year (£1.75tn) would be needed by developing countries (excluding China) by 2030 to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the effects of climate breakdown.
However, civil society climate experts called out “America’s decades-long game plan of denial, delay and deception” when it comes to loss and damage funds.
In one such stark example, Shehbaz Sharif, the prime minister of Pakistan, said his country needed more than $30bn in flood relief “despite our very low carbon footprints”.
The Barbados prime minister, Mia Mottley, celebrated that loss and damage had been added to the agenda of Cop27.
The family of the jailed British-Egyptian hunger striker Alaa Abd el-Fattah voiced fears that Egyptian officials may be torturing him behind closed doors through force-feeding. A pro-government Egyptian MP confronted Abd el-Fattah’s sister, Sanaa Seif, outside the conference.
The release of Abd el-Fattah has become the defining issue for British-Egyptian relations, the former British ambassador to Egypt John Casson said.
For the first time in years, Egypt has unblocked access to the Human Rights Watch website, a day after the Guardian described how delegates at Cop27 were unable to access it.
A UN group set up to crack down on the greenwashing of net zero pledges by industry and government has called for “red lines” to stop support for new fossil fuel exploration and overuse of carbon offsets.
Tuvalu has become the first country to use United Nations climate talks to demand an international fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, which would phase out the use of coal, oil and gas.
Temperatures in Ireland were so mild this autumn that trees were producing new growth before they shed their leaves, according to the Irish taoiseach, Micheál Martin.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
The treatment of the British-Egyptian democracy activist is a travesty, and emblematic of the regime’s brutality
Only the Egyptian regime knows the fate of Alaa Abd el-Fattah. It wants to keep it that way. The jailed British-Egyptian writer and democracy activist, a figurehead of the 2011 revolution, began refusing water on Sunday – six months after launching a hunger strike that has seen him consume no more than 100 calories a day. On Monday, his mother waited in vain outside the prison for his weekly letter. As of Tuesday evening, his family was still demanding proof of life, fearing he may die before the end of the Cop27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, which has finally propelled his case to international attention. They are also concerned that he may be tortured through force-feeding.
The British government appears to have at last accorded the case the importance it deserves. Writing to the 40-year-old father’s family at the weekend, Rishi Sunak said that he was “totally committed” to resolving the case, calling it a priority. The prime minister said that he would stress the need for a swift resolution to the Egyptian president.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
My brother Alaa Abd el-Fattah is on hunger strike in an Egyptian prison and is now refusing water. The prime minister is his last hope
At 10am on Sunday morning my brother Alaa drank his last sip of water in an Egyptian prison. He has been on hunger strike for more than 200 days and now, as world leaders arrive for Cop27, he has stopped drinking water.
He’s been in prison for nine years. He’s not doing this now because he wants to die, but because it’s the only way he might get to live again. He’s been in prison for all but one year of his son’s life for his writings about democracy and technology, and his anti-authoritarian stance. The whole world is watching what happens in Sharm el-Sheikh, where I write this from, and he is staking his life on a belief that the world will today stand with him.
Sanaa Seif is a film-maker, activist and sister of the imprisoned writer Alaa Abd el-Fattah
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Exclusive: In recently released correspondence, arbitrarily detained engineer speaks of fear skin cancer will return
Australian Robert Pether, jailed in Baghdad last year over a business dispute, has penned an emotional letter warning his prognosis is “bleak”, his human rights are being violated, and he is facing a potential “death sentence”.
In the letter to his family, released to Guardian Australia, Pether also reveals his daily torment about how he should break it to his children that he might not be coming home.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Ebrahim Raisi declares streets ‘safe and sound’ while shopkeepers strike and student demonstrations sparked by Mahsa Amini’s death reach 50th day
Iranian students protested and shopkeepers went on strike in the face of a widening crackdown, according to reports on social media, as demonstrations that flared over Mahsa Amini’s death continued for a 50th day.
Saturday’s protests came as President Ebrahim Raisi said Iran’s cities were “safe and sound” after earlier dismissing a pledge from the US president, Joe Biden, to “free Iran”.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Alaa Abd El-Fattah has been on hunger strike for six months and will refuse water from 6 November, the first day of the climate summit
The majority of living Nobel prize for literature laureates have called on world leaders attending the Cop27 climate conference in Egypt this week to help free thousands of political prisoners in the country, including the writer Alaa Abd El-Fattah who is six months into a hunger strike and “at risk of death”.
The letter, organised by Abd El-Fattah’s UK publishers Fitzcarraldo Editions and Seven Stories Press, has been signed by 13 Nobel prize for literature winners: Svetlana Alexievich, JM Coetzee, Annie Ernaux, Louise Glück, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Kazuo Ishiguro, Elfriede Jelinek, Mario Vargas Llosa, Patrick Modiano, Herta Müller, Orhan Pamuk, Wole Soyinka and Olga Tokarczuk.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Concern over country’s human rights record after Indian Ajit Rajagopal arrested on walk to raise awareness about climate crisis
The arrest of an Indian climate activist by Egyptian security forces has renewed alarm about the regime’s dire human rights record as it prepares to host the Cop27 UN climate summit.
Ajit Rajagopal, an architect and activist from Kerala in south India, was arrested on Sunday afternoon shortly after setting off on an eight-day walk from Cairo to Sharm el-Sheikh as part of a global campaign to raise awareness about the climate crisis.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
The country’s judiciary says those marching against the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini will be tried
Iran’s judiciary has announced that it will hold public trials for as many as 1,000 people detained during recent protests in Tehran alone – and more than a thousand others outside the capital – as international concern grew over Iran’s response to the protests that began with the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after her arrest.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said he was shocked by the number of innocent protesters who were being illegally and violently arrested. Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, has already announced that she is to ask the European Union to sanction the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation.
Interactive map shows spread of demonstrations over five weeks after woman’s death in custody
Iran has been gripped by protests since the death in custody on 16 September of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian of Kurdish origin who had been arrested three days earlier for allegedly breaching the Islamic dress code for women. This interactive map shows how protests spread between 16 September and 21 October, fuelled by public outrage over a crackdown that has led to the deaths of other young women and girls. Now in their seventh week, the protests show no sign of ending.
Methodology
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Qatar is a rich Gulf nation known for both its huge oil reserves and its flagrant human rights abuses. It is a dictatorship in which women have to seek permission from their male guardians to marry or work in many government jobs, in which being gay is criminalised and can result in a prison sentence, in which migrant workers are treated appallingly and in which journalists have been imprisoned for reporting critically on domestic politics. Yet all of this will inevitably be minimised as the world’s eyes fall on Qatar for the start of the 2022 World Cup next month.
Qatar’s leaders know this and this is why they have paid through the nose – estimates put it at $220bn (£190bn), by far the most expensive World Cup of all time – to host the competition, including lavishing money on efforts to lobby British politicians, as we report today. And so football teams, international supporters, the world’s media and foreign dignitaries will duly head to Qatar for an international sporting tournament that has serious environmental implications and will, some predict, leave a huge carbon footprint. At a conservative estimate, at least 6,500 migrant workers have lost their lives n Qatar since it was awarded the World Cup in 2011.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Crowds in Mahabad also fired on during rally held after funeral of protester Ismail Mauludi
Iranian security forces have opened fired on protesters in Zahedan a month after a massacre that killed scores of people in the restive south-eastern city.
Crowds were also fired on in Mahabad, another city with a long history of resistance against the regime, in renewed deadly violence at the end of the sixth week of unrest sparked by the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini on 16 September.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Group running tournament praises Socceroos for raising awareness of human rights but does not address issue of same-sex relationships
Qatari organisers of the 2022 World Cup have responded to the Socceroos’ criticism of the country’s human rights record, praising the group of players for raising awareness of issues ahead of the tournament while admitting that “no country is perfect”.
Sixteen Australian players raised their concerns about the “suffering” of migrant workers and the inability of LGBTQ+ people in Qatar “to love the person that they choose” in a collective video released on Thursday.
Sign up for our free morning newsletter and afternoon email to get your daily news roundup
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Incident outside National Museum in Doha comes less than a month before start of men’s football World Cup
The human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has been stopped by police in Qatar while staging a protest against the Gulf state’s criminalisation of LGBTQ+ people.
Tatchell’s protest outside the National Museum of Qatar in the capital, Doha, comes less than a month before the start of the Fifa World Cup, which is expected to attract 1.2 million visitors from around the world.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Independent media and human rights groups report arrests and physical assault as authorities try to suppress news of protests
As nationwide protests enter their fourth week in Iran, the government is increasing its crackdown on activists and journalists. On 22 September Niloofar Hamedi, an Iranian journalist, was arrested after posting a picture she took of the parents of Mahsa Amini hugging each other in a Tehran hospital on the day of their daughter’s death.
Amini, 22, died in police custody on 16 September after she was arrested for not wearing her hijab properly, which sparked the protests that then spread across the country.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
More than 100 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank this year. Where is the accountability?
It was early April 1988, at the height of the first intifada, and the hills were awash with spring flowers. I took the professor and activist Noam Chomsky to visit the Palestinian village of Beita near Nablus. He wanted to speak to the villagers about a recent incident in which a group of Israeli settlers from Elon Moreh, 10km (6 miles) from Beita, had got into a confrontation with some villagers while out hiking. Two of the Palestinian villagers and one of the Israeli settlers were shot and killed. The army initially blamed the Palestinians for the settler’s death. It emerged later that she – like the two dead villagers – had been killed by a bullet fired by one of the men guarding the settlers. But, by then, the army had invaded the village, destroyed at least 14 houses, killed a third villager, arrested dozens of men in the village and deported several of them. Chomsky listened attentively and was saddened but not surprised. He had anticipated that an increased rate of settlement-building would place the occupier and the occupied, the land confiscators and those who lost their land, close together physically – with predictable results.
This prediction has grown truer by the year, but I still could not have imagined the state we would be in 34 years later. Just last Friday, soldiers killed Adel Daoud, aged 14, and Mahdi Ladadweh, aged 17. On Saturday, two more teenagers, Mahmoud Al-Sous and Ahmed Daraghmeh, were killed. The number of people killed by Israeli forces this year stands, shockingly, at more than 100.
For many years, the land around Beita was generally peaceful, and we enjoyed many lovely walks in the valley below the mountain of Jabal Sabih. It was surrounded by olive orchards. The track we would walk along had smooth rocks where water flowed in winter, and in spring carpets of multicoloured wildflowers covered both sides.
Then, last February, the Israeli attorney general moved to authorise the re-establishment of the evacuated Israeli settlement of Evyatar, on land that is privately owned by Palestinians, near Beita on Jabal Sabih. Since May 2021, regular protests have been held by Palestinians against this outpost and other settlements in the area, resulting in nine Palestinians being killed and 5,300 injured.
At the time of Chomsky’s visit, there was still some expectation that the Israeli political opposition to settlements had some prospect of success. Today, the left in Israel is almost completely silenced. The major parties in next month’s elections compete on who is the greater proponent of settlements, and who takes a tougher line at quashing Palestinian resistance to it. The prime minister, Yair Lapid, and defence minister, Benny Gantz (both of “liberal”, “centrist” parties), each tries to prove to voters that, contrary to what the right claims, they are not weak on “security”. This means that, until the elections take place, we can only expect more Palestinians to be maimed and killed.
Raja Shehadeh is the author of We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I (Profile Books)
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Huge bravery of Sepideh Rashno, Mahsa Amini and Nika Shakarami against state restrictions on women’s freedoms may be catalyst for change
In July, a video began circulating online of an altercation between two women on a Tehran bus. One, in full hijab, attacks the other, a 28-year-old called Sepideh Rashno, for not wearing a hijab, mandated under Iranian law and punishable with a fine or even prison.
In the weeks leading up to the incident, footage of similar episodes had been spreading with increased frequency online, evidence of the growing pressure being exerted on women by the regime. But this particular video went viral, and led to Rashno being arrested, abused and forced into making an apology on state television.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Women who fled regime are working hard to expose abuses in Iran and say this time real change is possible
Iranian and Kurdish women living in the UK believe the prospect of freedom for millions of women in their home country has never been greater following protests after the death of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested in Tehran for not wearing her headscarf correctly.
Many of those who fled the Iranian regime because of its attacks on human and women’s rights are working hard behind the scenes to support women in their home country to expose the abuses in the hope of encouraging the international community to act to bring about regime change.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Woman, said to have been trafficked, is only adult allowed back since end of Islamic State ground war
A British woman and her child have been repatriated from a Syrian camp, the first time an adult has been allowed to come back to the UK from detention since the end of the ground war against Islamic State.
The Foreign Office said that British policy to those held in Syria remained unchanged, and that it considered requests for help on “a case by case basis”, but campaigners said it was a significant first step.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Exclusive: Meetings while in Saudi Arabia undisclosed due to ‘administrative oversight’, says business department
The chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, held undisclosed meetings with senior executives of Saudi Arabian firms when he was the business secretary, documents acquired by the Guardian show.
The meetings occurred in January, when Kwarteng visited the kingdom for a two-day trip under his previous ministerial role.