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Category: UK news

  • The Taliban are not the only threat to Afghanistan. Aid cuts could undo 20 years of progress

    The most vulnerable people will bear the cost of sanctions, as services and the economy collapse

    Watching Afghanistan’s unfolding trauma, I’ve thought a lot about Mumtaz Ahmed, a young teacher I met a few years ago. Her family fled Kabul during Taliban rule in the late 1990s.

    Raised as a refugee in Pakistan, Ahmed had defied the odds and made it to university. Now, she was back in Afghanistan teaching maths in a rural girls’ school. “I came back because I believe in education and I love my country,” she told me. “These girls have a right to learn – without education, Afghanistan has no future.”

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

  • PM accused of deliberate ‘strategic void’ on China to prioritise trade

    UK government ‘ambiguous’ on policy despite China’s clear threat to the west, says report

    Boris Johnson has been accused of avoiding a clear strategy on China for fear it will force him to make difficult decisions that put human rights ahead of enhanced trade with the world’s second largest economy.

    The allegation of a “strategic void” is made in a major report on the future of UK-China relations by the House of Lords’ international and defence select committee.

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

  • Tory MPs urge Priti Patel to return migrants who attempt to enter UK illegally

    Suggestion to home secretary condemned as breach of UN convention on human rights

    Conservative MPs have urged the home secretary, Priti Patel, to send back immediately anyone including children who boards an illegal crossing of the Channel from France.

    They claimed the measure should be enacted because the UK needed to “up the stakes” with the French government, which has been blamed by the home secretary for failing to curb the number of migrants sailing across the channel.

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

  • UK’s Troubles amnesty plan goes further than Pinochet’s, study says

    Criticism of move to end prosecutions says it is broader than almost 300 other amnesties around world

    The UK government’s plan to end all Troubles-era prosecutions in Northern Ireland would create an amnesty wider than the one Augusto Pinochet introduced to shield human rights violators in Chile, according to a study.

    Downing Street’s plan would offer a level of impunity more sweeping than almost 300 other post-conflict amnesties introduced around the world, said the report, published on Tuesday.

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

  • The shocking rise in anti-LGBTQ hate crime shows bigotry is still ruining lives | Owen Jones

    Sadly, blending in for a quiet life remains a necessary survival strategy for far too many people in Britain today

    It is impossible to know how much of the surge in reported hate crimes against LGBTQ people is due to escalating harassment and violence, and how much is down to the increased willingness of victims to inform the authorities. What we do know that is that recorded homophobic and transphobic hate crimes have jumped every year since 2015, and yet with an estimated four in five still going unreported, the already grisly figures only hint at a far bleaker reality.

    The incidents vary in nature and severity: from abuse hurled at someone identified as LGBTQ because of their appearance, or mannerisms, or a fleeting or profound show of affection towards a partner; to gay men being beaten and robbed, as happened in a suspected homophobic attack on the streets of Edinburgh last month, or a trans man savagely attacked in Bournemouth earlier this year. “According to our research, many experienced verbal harassment, physical abuse, threatening messages, and damage to property,” says Eloise Stonborough of the LGBTQ civil rights organisation Stonewall.

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

  • Afghanistan and the dangers of cynical isolationism | Letter

    Geoffrey Bindman says that without collective action to defend the oppressed and the vulnerable, we are heading into dangerous isolationist territory

    Simon Jenkins is right that “moral imperialism” has long been a motivating factor in military interventions by Britain and other western nations (The west’s nation-building fantasy is to blame for the mess in Afghanistan, 20 August). Afghanistan and Iraq are contemporary examples.

    But concern about motive does not detract from the need to support and strengthen the international protection of human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and the framework of international humanitarian law which followed it were endorsed by almost every nation. The absence of an international police force – a weakness in the structure – increases the need for individual states to share responsibility for enforcement, particularly of international criminal law. The development of a “responsibility to protect”, dismissed by Jenkins, gives legitimacy to necessary humanitarian intervention. Military action should be a last resort, but it cannot be ruled out of every situation where lives are at stake.

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

  • Afghanistan and the dangers of cynical isolationism | Letter

    Geoffrey Bindman says that without collective action to defend the oppressed and the vulnerable, we are heading into dangerous isolationist territory

    Simon Jenkins is right that “moral imperialism” has long been a motivating factor in military interventions by Britain and other western nations (The west’s nation-building fantasy is to blame for the mess in Afghanistan, 20 August). Afghanistan and Iraq are contemporary examples.

    But concern about motive does not detract from the need to support and strengthen the international protection of human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and the framework of international humanitarian law which followed it were endorsed by almost every nation. The absence of an international police force – a weakness in the structure – increases the need for individual states to share responsibility for enforcement, particularly of international criminal law. The development of a “responsibility to protect”, dismissed by Jenkins, gives legitimacy to necessary humanitarian intervention. Military action should be a last resort, but it cannot be ruled out of every situation where lives are at stake.

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

  • Labour says PPE contracts must not go to Xinjiang firms that use forced workers

    Exclusive: Emily Thornberry appeals to Sajid Javid to tackle issue of forced labour in Chinese province

    Labour has written to the health secretary, Sajid Javid, urging him to ensure a new £5bn contract for NHS protective equipment including gowns and masks is not awarded to companies implicated in forced labour in China’s Xinjiang region.

    Following up earlier concerns about medical gloves for the NHS being produced in Malaysia, where there have been consistent reports of forced labour in factories, Emily Thornberry called for an urgent response.

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

  • Sturgeon urges Raab to assist Scottish Sikh man allegedly tortured in India

    First minister raises ‘deep concerns’ about case of Jagtar Singh Johal, who has been imprisoned for four years awaiting trial

    Nicola Sturgeon has written to the embattled foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, urging him to intervene in the case of a Scottish Sikh man who has been imprisoned in India for nearly four years awaiting trial, and is facing the death penalty after a confession allegedly extracted under torture.

    In Sturgeon’s first formal intervention on the case, seen exclusively by the Guardian, the first minister expresses the Scottish government’s “deep concerns” about Jagtar Singh Johal’s detention without trial – as well as his allegations of torture and mistreatment by Indian authorities while in custody.

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

  • Here’s how the UN can make a difference right now in Afghanistan | Mark Malloch-Brown

    Establishing humanitarian corridors and monitoring human rights is crucial – and achievable – as the Taliban take control

    • Mark Malloch-Brown is a former UN deputy secretary general

    I have seen this tragedy before. As a young UN planner in the late 1980s, I helped design the relief operation after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. More than a decade later, as head of the UN Development Programme, I led early relief and reconstruction efforts after the fall of the Taliban. In both cases, the fragile peace that followed conflicts was undermined by key actors in the international community, who stood back or actively opposed when their assistance was needed. The US armed the opposition to the government the Soviets left behind; and when a US-backed government then took power after 9/11, it faced opposition from America’s Asian rivals.

    Related: Why did we ignore the lessons of history in Afghanistan? We need a public inquiry | Jonathan Steele

    Mark Malloch-Brown, a former UN deputy secretary general, is president of the Open Society Foundations

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

  • Dissident Pakistani exiles in UK ‘on hit list’

    Critics of country’s military told by Met police of plots against them as security forces fear there may be an attack in Britain

    Pakistani exiles living in London who have criticised the country’s powerful military have been warned that their lives are in danger, raising fresh concern over authoritarian regimes targeting foreign dissidents in the UK.

    British security sources are understood to be concerned that Pakistan, a strong UK ally – particularly on intelligence issues – might be prepared to target individuals on British soil.

    Related: How western travel influencers got tangled up in Pakistan’s politics

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

  • Alta Fixsler: European court says UK hospital can withdraw life support

    ECHR rejects appeal from parents of girl who suffered severe brain injury at birth

    A Manchester hospital may withdraw life support from a seriously brain-damaged child after the European court of human rights rejected an appeal by the girl’s family.

    The decision was “devastating” for the parents of two-year-old Alta Fixsler, said lawyers for the family. They “only want to see every option explored to try and save their daughter’s life”, the lawyers added.

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

  • Serious questions raised by solitary confinement in prisons | Letters

    Emma Ginn and Annie Viswanathan on the effect of solitary confinement on immigration detainees and Dean Kingham on prisoners abandoned to close supervision centres

    Prolonged solitary confinement is an extreme form of treatment, prohibited in all circumstances under international law. Your article (Fifty-two prisoners in close supervision units ‘that may amount to torture’, 26 July) exposed this practice in highly restrictive prisons.

    Prolonged solitary confinement has in fact become routine in all prisons during the pandemic, with many individuals being confined alone or with a cellmate for 22 to 24 hours each day since March 2020.

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

  • Home Office challenged over ‘sped-up’ removal of Vietnamese nationals

    Signs that detainees were victims of trafficking are being overlooked, say campaigners

    Lawyers are challenging the Home Office policy of deporting people to Vietnam who could be victims of trafficking after the UK sent a second charter flight to the country within a matter of weeks.

    The challenge follows concern from lawyers and charities that some victims of trafficking could be wrongly removed from the UK under a speedy processing system for migrants in detention known as “detained asylum casework”.

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

  • Fifty-two prisoners in close supervision units ‘that may amount to torture’

    FoI request reveals number of inmates in England and Wales kept in conditions criticised by UN expert

    Fifty-two people are being held in prison units in England and Wales in conditions that a UN human rights expert has said may amount to torture, the Guardian has learned.

    Close supervision centres (CSC) hold some of the most dangerous men in the prison system in small, highly supervised units within high-security jails in conditions previously described by the prisons inspector as “the most restrictive … with limited stimuli and human contact”.

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

  • ‘Complete removal of hope’: an inmate on life in a close supervision centre

    Case study: Kevan Thakrar says the high suicide and self-harm rates in CSCs are no surprise

    Kevan Thakrar was given a life sentence with a minimum term of 35 years in jail in 2008 for the murder of three men in a dispute over drugs, and the attempted murder of two women who were in the house at the time. His brother, Miran, fired the shots but Kevan was convicted under the law of joint enterprise. After being accused of attacking prison guards at HMP Farkland, he was reportedly moved to a close supervision centre (CSC) in March 2010. The following year he was acquitted of two counts of attempted murder and three counts of wounding with intent in relation to the attack on prison guards, whom he admitted injuring but claimed he did so because he feared being attacked himself. Despite the acquittal he is believed to have remained in CSCs at different locations ever since.

    Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur for torture, said of Kevan Thakrar: “For the past 11 years, he is being held alone in a cell for more than 22 hours a day, is not permitted to participate in regular prison activities, receives his food through a hatch and does not even have a privacy screen when using the toilet inside his cell.”

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

  • Foreign Office is ‘complicit in British man’s Somalia torture’

    ‘David Taylor’ claims hooding, sensory deprivation and waterboarding was to persuade him to cooperate with the CIA

    A British citizen has claimed he was tortured in Somalia and questioned by US intelligence officers, raising concern that controversial practices of the post-9/11 “war on terror” are still being used.

    The 45-year-old from London alleges he has endured hooding, sensory deprivation and waterboarding at the hands of the Somali authorities to persuade him, he believes, to cooperate with the CIA. Foreign Office officials are aware of the allegationsof torture and US involvement, but their failure to act has raised questions over UK complicity.

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

  • UK plan for Troubles amnesty breaches international obligations – Irish minister

    Simon Coveney says plan would harm peace process and add ‘years of misery’ for families

    Ireland’s foreign minister has warned that a British government plan to bring prosecutions for killings during the Troubles to an end would breach its international obligations.

    The proposals would also undoubtedly be tested in the courts and add “years of uncertainty and misery for families with no benefit”, Simon Coveney said.

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

  • Priti Patel’s borders bill is designed to look tough, not solve any real problems | Daniel Trilling

    Asylum claims in the UK are at a historic low. These punitive measures will only force more people into legal limbo

    We are living at a time where displacement is a major feature of life on this planet – but it’s one we have the resources to deal with. Faced with that reality, wealthy countries have a choice between acting in solidarity with the rest of the world’s population or pulling up the drawbridge.

    Judging by the contents of the nationality and borders bill, which has its second reading in parliament on 19 and 20 July, the UK is opting for the latter. Although trailed by the home secretary, Priti Patel, who is the minister in charge, as a major reform of the country’s “broken” immigration system, its main effect will be to add an extra dose of cruelty to the existing arrangements.

    Daniel Trilling is the author of Lights in the Distance: Exile and Refuge at the Borders of Europe and Bloody Nasty People: the Rise of Britain’s Far Right

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

  • UK financier loses latest round in fight over future of NSO Group

    British investor Stephen Peel in ongoing dispute with partners over Luxembourg company linked to spyware firm

    A British financier’s voting rights at a Luxembourg company linked to Novalpina Capital, whose fund owns a majority stake in the spyware firm NSO Group, will remain suspended, a Luxembourg court has ruled.

    Though this may not be permanent, the decision appears to mark a setback for the financier, Stephen Peel, a former Olympic rower, in a bitter legal dispute that has erupted between him and his two longtime business partners, Stefan Kowski and Bastian Lueken.

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

  • UK must match rhetoric with action on China’s treatment of Uyghurs, say MPs

    Foreign affairs committee calls for import ban on products from Xinjiang, where it says there is ‘industrial-scale forced labour’

    Britain must act to stop China’s atrocities against Uyghur Muslims by banning the import of Chinese cotton and solar panels from Xinjiang province, as well as by announcing that no government officials will attend the Winter Olympics in Beijing, a report by MPs says.

    The chair of parliament’s foreign affairs committee, Tom Tugendhat, said that without action the UK would be allowing China “to nest the dragon deeper and deeper into British life”.

    Related: France investigates fashion brands over forced Uyghur labour claims

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

  • Europe’s rights tsar urges MPs and peers to oppose protest curbs

    Dunja Mijatović says policing bill would seriously harm freedom of expression in England and Wales

    A proposed new law that could impose time and noise limits on protests in England and Wales would seriously harm freedom of expression and should be rejected by parliamentarians, Europe’s human rights commissioner has said.

    Dunja Mijatović of the Council of Europe made her concerns clear in a letter to MPs and peers as the former prepare to debate the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill on Monday.

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

  • Malawi Pride and press freedoms in Palestine: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

    A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Chile to Cambodia

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

  • Rights groups join forces to call for UK corporate accountability laws

    Companies must have human rights and environmental obligations, say TUC and Amnesty International

    Almost 30 organisations have joined forces to call for the UK to follow in the footsteps of its European partners by introducing corporate accountability laws requiring companies to undertake human rights and environmental due diligence across their supply chains.

    The groups, including the TUC, Friends of the Earth and Amnesty International, say systemic human rights abuses and environmentally destructive practices are commonplace in the global operations and supply chains of UK businesses, and voluntary approaches to tackle the problem have failed.

    Related: 14 major UK employers join socially focused Purposeful Company scheme

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

  • Our traditions, way of life and culture are under threat, Gypsy leader warns Patel

    Letter says Appleby horse fair will be criminalised under terms of new police bill

    The Appleby horse fair is among Britain’s oldest and most colourful traditions. But this celebration in Cumbria and other Gypsy cultural events will be criminalised under new legislation planned by Priti Patel, Gypsy leaders have warned.

    The market town of Appleby-in-Westmorland is transformed every summer by the annual gathering of members of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) community, with thousands of tourists flocking to watch horses being washed in the River Eden and to buy traditional Gypsy goods.

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

  • Priti Patel’s plan to ‘offshore’ asylum seekers is callous | Letter

    We should be deeply pained by the way we are with the stranger who lives in our midst, writes Alexandra Wright, senior rabbi at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue

    Priti Patel’s proposed legislation to send asylum seekers overseas while their claims or appeals are pending is ruthless (Report, 28 June).

    There are 41,700 asylum seekers or resettled persons in the UK. Many have been waiting for years for their claim to be dealt with by the Home Office. They live in poor and often squalid dispersal accommodation, on less than £40 per week. They cannot work. Poverty and uncertainty often lead to serious physical and mental health issues in asylum seekers and their children.

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

  • Pauline Latham MP picks up bill to end child marriage in England and Wales

    MP to take over private member’s bill proposed by Sajid Javid to raise legal age to 18, after his promotion to health secretary

    The MP Pauline Latham will step in to adopt Sajid Javid’s private member’s bill to end child marriage after his promotion to health secretary.

    Javid presented a bill raising the minimum legal age of marriage to 18 in England and Wales to parliament earlier this month, but is not able to take it forward because he is no longer a backbencher.

    Related: Government pledges to raise legal age of marriage to 18 in England and Wales

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

  • UN calls for end of ‘impunity’ for police violence against black people

    Report launched in aftermath of George Floyd murder cites example of 2018 death of Kevin Clarke in UK

    A UN report that analysed racial justice in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd has called on member states including the UK to end the “impunity” enjoyed by police officers who violate the human rights of black people.

    The UN human rights office analysis of 190 deaths across the world led to the report’s damning conclusion that law enforcement officers are rarely held accountable for killing black people due in part to deficient investigations and an unwillingness to acknowledge the impact of structural racism.

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

  • £17bn of UK arms sold to rights’ abusers

    Weapons licensed for export to two-thirds of states on ‘not free’ register, including Libya, Saudi Arabia and Turkey

    Two-thirds of countries classified as “not free” because of their dire record on human rights and civil liberties have received weapons licensed by the UK government over the past decade, new analysis reveals.

    Between 2011-2020, the UK licensed £16.8bn of arms to countries criticised by Freedom House, a US government-funded human rights group.

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

  • When I was losing my young son, the Human Rights Act gave us a lifeline | Craig Mathieson

    The act, plus legal aid, helped my family to secure the help we desperately needed. Attempts to undermine it put us all at risk

    If anyone had told me that my family would ever need disability benefits, legal aid or the Human Rights Act, I wouldn’t have believed them. I am sharing my story because my fear is that when the next family comes to need these same things, they will not be there.

    Cameron was the youngest of our four wonderful children. He was born in 2007, and it quickly became clear he was very ill. He had to be rushed to Alder Hey children’s hospital for emergency surgery when he was only three days old. He was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, then at 18 months we learned that he had Duchenne muscular dystrophy too. I remember the consultant telling us with tears in his eyes that Duchenne was a severely life-limiting condition and my wife and I replying in unison that it would not limit Cameron’s life.

    You see, we had already begged him to fight when he was three days old and promised him that if he could not live long, then we would do all we could to help him live fast. He took us at our word, and lived a life of love and laughter, pedal to the metal and without fear, for five and a quarter magical years, despite all that was thrown at him.

    This coming Saturday would have been his 14th birthday, a day we celebrate his life and the happiness of his childhood despite extraordinary challenges. Two years after Cameron’s death, we won a landmark appeal that allowed us, and other parents in our position, to continue claiming disability living allowance while caring for Cameron in hospital – after those benefits were taken away from us. This year is also one that brings me a great deal of trepidation about the direction of travel for justice, rights and protections in this country.

    I am saddened that the government now appears to be seeking to further reduce protections for all of us by watering down the Human Rights Act – the legislation on which we based our case – via the current review being conducted by a former judge. The Human Rights Act is not just one of the ways for UK citizens to challenge government decisions we deem to be unfair: it is really the only way.

    That should scare everyone in this country. Of course, I hope no one else finds themselves in the position my family and I found ourselves in, but it could be any one of us.

    The interplay between Cameron’s conditions and a blood-clotting disorder they caused was devastating, and my wife and I had to give up work to care for him during long, repeated stays in hospital, through surgery after surgery, struggling to get him home again with his sister and brothers.

    We did not claim any benefits for Cameron until we had spent all of our savings and sold every last asset. Then, we reluctantly accepted that we had reached the end of the line and had to ask the state for help. We count ourselves lucky to this day that we live in a country that allowed us to effectively retire during Cameron’s life to do our best for him and his siblings. A country where generations of us selflessly pay in to help others, without thought for what and when we may ever get back.

    Craig Mathieson is a father and husband who is supporting Amnesty’s campaign to keep the Human Rights Act

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