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Category: US news

  • Jimmy Carter’s crowning achievements came after having the most powerful job in the world

    The Georgian was a campaigner for human rights, democracy and public health – and a devoted husband

    It was the spring of 2014 and I was at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Washington to interview Jimmy Carter. The former president had just published a new book on women’s rights and was keen to make his case. The abuse of women and girls was, he believed, the worst human rights violation of the time and he was determined to issue a global call to action on the subject.

    He argued passionately and eloquently, rolling though a litany of abuses women and girls around the world face: rape and violence in war, trafficking, infanticide and, in his own country, an epidemic of sexual assault at universities.

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

  • Jimmy Carter was a warrior for peace. We must continue his fight | Katrina vanden Heuvel

    We should remember his fearlessness in the cause of peace, and his faith in the democratic institutions he fought to protect

    Jimmy Carter died on Sunday at the age of 100. The former president’s passing followed that of former first lady Rosalynn Carter, to whom he was married from 1946 until her death in 2023. After leaving the White House in 1981, Carter enjoyed by far the longest retirement of any president in history: nearly 44 years.

    Tributes have invariably described Carter as a decent, dedicated public servant; a longtime Sunday school teacher who built homes with Habitat for Humanity. A humble man who lived modestly and who, unlike his successors, did not enrich himself on the speaker circuit.

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

  • Jimmy Carter was a warrior for peace. We must continue his fight | Katrina vanden Heuvel

    We should remember his fearlessness in the cause of peace, and his faith in the democratic institutions he fought to protect

    Jimmy Carter died on Sunday at the age of 100. The former president’s passing followed that of former first lady Rosalynn Carter, to whom he was married from 1946 until her death in 2023. After leaving the White House in 1981, Carter enjoyed by far the longest retirement of any president in history: nearly 44 years.

    Tributes have invariably described Carter as a decent, dedicated public servant; a longtime Sunday school teacher who built homes with Habitat for Humanity. A humble man who lived modestly and who, unlike his successors, did not enrich himself on the speaker circuit.

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

  • Friday briefing: Will Trump 2.0 turn America into an autocracy?

    In today’s newsletter: Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum says the president-elect won’t transform into a dictator – but he could set in motion an unstoppable democratic decline

    Good morning.

    The global surge of authoritarian rule in recent years has been stark and alarming. Strongman leaders like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have systematically consolidated power, while a new wave of autocratic rulers have emerged from Asia to South America.

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

  • US violating law to fund Israel despite alleged human rights abuses, lawsuit says

    Suit claims state department is deliberately bypassing the Leahy Law by failing to sanction Israeli units accused of widespread atrocities in Palestinian territories

    The state department is facing a new lawsuit brought by Palestinians and Palestinian Americans accusing the agency of deliberately circumventing a decades-old US human rights law to continue funding Israeli military units accused of widespread atrocities in the occupied Palestinian territories.

    The lawsuit, which was filed on Tuesday, marks the first time that victims of alleged human rights abuses are challenging the state department’s failure to ever sanction an Israeli security unit under the Leahy Law, a 1990s-era law that prohibits US military assistance to forces credibly implicated in gross human rights violations.

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

  • US shuts down prisons amid scrutiny over sexual abuse and crisis of suicides

    Bureau of Prisons closes California facility and suspends operations at six others as rights activists call for clemency

    The US Bureau of Prisons (BoP) announced on Thursday it was permanently closing a California women’s prison plagued by staff sexual misconduct scandals, and suspending operations at six other federal institutions.

    The shutdowns come as the federal agency is facing intensifying scrutiny surrounding guards’ rampant sexual abuse of incarcerated residents, a crisis of suicides and preventable deaths across its prisons and reports of severe medical neglect.

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

  • No more marches, but I have faith in women to stand up to Trump | Natasha Walter

    Feminist solidarity has weakened, but women around the world tell me their fight continues

    What happens in America does not stay in America. The prospect of Trump’s second administration is devastating for many American women, but its reverberations are also echoing for women across the globe, and bringing much more fear and uncertainty than last time around.

    Eight years ago, while Trump’s success shocked women in Britain, it also brought rays of hope – in the shape of a resurgence of solidarity. On the day after the election in 2016, I remember going into my workplace, a charity for refugee women, feeling pretty bleak, and looking at other women’s downcast faces. Then, at the end of the day, one of our colleagues had the most unexpected news. The charity’s online donations had rocketed.

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

  • No more marches, but I have faith in women to stand up to Trump | Natasha Walter

    Feminist solidarity has weakened, but women around the world tell me their fight continues

    What happens in America does not stay in America. The prospect of Trump’s second administration is devastating for many American women, but its reverberations are also echoing for women across the globe, and bringing much more fear and uncertainty than last time around.

    Eight years ago, while Trump’s success shocked women in Britain, it also brought rays of hope – in the shape of a resurgence of solidarity. On the day after the election in 2016, I remember going into my workplace, a charity for refugee women, feeling pretty bleak, and looking at other women’s downcast faces. Then, at the end of the day, one of our colleagues had the most unexpected news. The charity’s online donations had rocketed.

    Continue reading…

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

  • No more marches, but I have faith in women to stand up to Trump | Natasha Walter

    Feminist solidarity has weakened, but women around the world tell me their fight continues

    What happens in America does not stay in America. The prospect of Trump’s second administration is devastating for many American women, but its reverberations are also echoing for women across the globe, and bringing much more fear and uncertainty than last time around.

    Eight years ago, while Trump’s success shocked women in Britain, it also brought rays of hope – in the shape of a resurgence of solidarity. On the day after the election in 2016, I remember going into my workplace, a charity for refugee women, feeling pretty bleak, and looking at other women’s downcast faces. Then, at the end of the day, one of our colleagues had the most unexpected news. The charity’s online donations had rocketed.

    Continue reading…

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

  • Inmates burn themselves in protest at ‘inhumane’ Virginia prison conditions

    Officials acknowledge prisoners have harmed themselves but say they did not set themselves on fire or self-immolate

    Several incarcerated people in Virginia’s high-security Red Onion state prison have intentionally burned themselves in a protest against harsh conditions at the facility.

    A written statement from Virginia’s department of corrections acknowledged that men imprisoned there had harmed themselves, although the authorities confirmed six incidents while others reported that 12 men were injured.

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

  • California voters reject measure to ban forced prison labor

    Prop 6, which would have banned involuntary servitude in prisons, fails in blow to criminal justice reform advocates

    California voters have rejected a ballot measure to prohibit forced prison labor, in a major disappointment to advocates of criminal justice reform and many of the 90,000 people incarcerated in state prisons.

    Proposition 6 would have amended the state’s constitution to ban involuntary servitude for people in prison. The proposition would instead have allowed people in prison to chose their jobs, with a related proposal that would have created voluntary work programs within the prison system.

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

  • Berlin summons Iran ambassador over execution of German-Iranian

    Daughter of Jamshid Sharmahd says family let down by US and German governments’ failure to save him

    Germany has recalled its ambassador to Tehran and summoned the Iranian charge d’affaires in Berlin in protest over the execution of a German-Iranian dual national, Jamshid Sharmahd, accused of terrorism by Iran.

    His daughter, Gazelle Sharmahd, who had pressed the German and US governments hard to save him, said she and her brother felt let down by the failure of both governments to do more. Sharmahd was executed on Monday.

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

  • US investigation of IDF unit for alleged abuse against Palestinians could jeopardize aid

    Nine members of Force 100 investigated over allegations of sexual assaulting prisoner at Sde Teiman detention camp

    An Israeli military unit that has been accused of human rights abuses against Palestinian detainees is reportedly under investigation by the US state department in a move that could lead to it being barred from receiving assistance.

    The inquiry into the activities of Force 100 was instigated following a spate of allegations that Palestinians held under its guard at a detention centre have been subject to torture and brutal mistreatment, including sexual assault, Axios reported on Monday.

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

  • Alabama executes death-row prisoner with nitrogen gas

    Alan Miller, 59, second person in US to be executed via controversial technique, shook and trembled on gurney

    Alabama has carried out the second execution in the US using the controversial method of nitrogen gas, an experimental technique for humans that veterinarians have deemed unacceptable in the US and Europe for the euthanasia of most animals.

    Alan Eugene Miller, 59, was pronounced dead at 6.38pm local time at a south Alabama prison.

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

  • US banana giant ordered to pay $38m to families of Colombian men killed by death squads

    Landmark verdict against Chiquita marks first time major US company held liable for funding human rights abuses abroad

    A Florida court has ordered Chiquita Brands International to pay $38m to the families of eight Colombian men murdered by a paramilitary death squad, after the American banana giant was shown to have financed the terrorist organisation from 1997-2004.

    The landmark ruling late on Monday came after 17 years of legal efforts and is the first time that the fruit multinational has paid out compensation to Colombian victims, opening the way for thousands of others to seek restitution.

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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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  • Alabama sets nitrogen-gas execution for man who survived botched 2022 effort

    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.

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

  • 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.

  • Number of writers jailed in China exceeds 100 for first time, says report

    Freedom to Write index says there are 107 people in prison for published content in China, with many accused of ‘picking quarrels’

    The number of writers jailed in China has surpassed 100, with nearly half imprisoned for online expression.

    The grim milestone is revealed in the 2023 Freedom to Write index, a report compiled by Pen America, published on Wednesday.

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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.

  • 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.

  • ‘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.

  • Exclusive: groups call for US inquiry into police killing of ‘Cop City’ protester

    Petition to Inter-American Commission on Human Rights filed on behalf of Manuel Paez Terán, aka ‘Tortuguita’, and their mother

    Human rights groups have filed a petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights calling for a US Department of Justice investigation into the police killing of “Cop City” protester Manuel Paez Terán, as well as the release of all related evidence, and apologies to the family from the US government.

    Two organizations – Robert F Kennedy Human Rights and the Southern Center for Human Rights – together with the University of Dayton Human Rights Center filed the 37-page petition to the Washington DC-based commission, on behalf of Paez Terán, also known as “Tortuguita”, and their mother, Belkis Terán. The Guardian obtained an exclusive view of the document.

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

  • What did the US’s vetoed Gaza ceasefire resolution say?

    Draft resolution put before UN represents important tonal – but not substantive – shift for White House

    After months of vetoing other UN security council resolutions in an effort to defend Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, the US has in recent weeks gone on to the diplomatic front foot in New York, drafting and tabling its own resolution that was put to a vote on Friday before being vetoed by Russia and China.

    The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said the resolution would send “a strong signal”. But what was that signal precisely?

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

  • There is no moral argument that justifies the sale of weapons to Israel | Mary Lawlor

    Israel has shown it will use these arms indiscriminately against Palestinians. Why does the west continue to supply them?

    Earlier this month, a doctor who had recently returned from Gaza provided shocking testimony about the scale of human suffering that Palestinians are enduring under an Israeli military onslaught that has entered its sixth month. There exist no moral arguments that can justify the continued sale of weapons to Israel by states that respect the principle of the universality of human rights.

    During my work as the United Nations’ special rapporteur on human rights defenders, Palestinian human rights defenders have emphasized to me the importance of a ban being placed on such sales, given that Israel has demonstrated time and again that it will use such weapons indiscriminately against Palestinians.

    Mary Lawlor is the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders

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

  • Rat fur, arsenic and copper: the dangerous ingredients lacing US prison water

    Incarcerated people often must drink unhealthy water, a particularly cruel – but not unusual – form of punishment

    Russell Rowe spent almost two and a half years in Washington DC’s central detention facility, where rusty water flowed from taps in sinks that were connected to toilets. He remembers dawdling at the nurse’s station when it was time to take his meds, in hopes she’d give him an extra, tiny “portion” cup of water, the cup that often holds or accompanies pills.

    “I was just in a state of constant dehydration,” he said. “My whole body felt different. I just didn’t feel well.”

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

  • Alabama is using the notion that embryos are people to surveil and harass women | Moira Donegan

    Even before the court ruled in favor of this vulgar fiction, state authorities relied on the concept to intimidate and jail women

    Something that’s important to remember about last week’s ruling by the Alabama supreme court, which held that frozen embryos were persons under state law, is that the very absurdity of the claim is itself a demonstration of power. That a frozen embryo – a microscopic bit of biological information that can’t even be called tissue, a flick laden with the hopes of aspiring parents but fulfilling none of them – is equivalent in any way to a child is the sort of thing you can only say if no one has the power to laugh at you. The Alabama supreme court is the final court of review in that state. It cannot be appealed. For the foreseeable future, frozen cells in Alabama have the same legal status there as you or I do. Is this an absurd elevation of the status of an embryo, or an obscene degradation of human beings? The answer, of course, is both.

    The decision immediately halted almost all IVF procedures in Alabama. Aspiring patents there – including women who had undergone rounds of injected hormone treatments and the invasive, gruelingly painful egg retrieval process in order to create the embryos – will now be unable to have the material implanted in an attempt to create a pregnancy. Hundreds of other frozen embryos – those that are not viable, or not needed by families that are already complete – can now not be destroyed as is typical IVF practice. They need to be continually stored in freezers, or what the Alabama supreme court refers to, in Orwellian style, as “cryogenic nurseries”, a term you almost have to admire for the sheer audacity of its creepiness.

    Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

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

  • Julian Assange risks ‘flagrant denial of justice’ if tried in US, London court told

    Lawyers seek permission at high court to appeal against WikiLeaks founder’s extradition

    Julian Assange faces the risk of a “flagrant denial of justice” if tried in the US, his lawyers have told a permission to appeal hearing in London, which could result in the WikiLeaks founder being extradited within days if unsuccessful.

    Assange, who published thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, could be jailed for up to 175 years – “a grossly disproportionate punishment” – if convicted in the US, the high court heard on Tuesday.

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

  • Israel’s campaign in Gaza ‘plausibly’ amounts to genocide, US court finds

    But federal judge in California says lawsuit aimed at stopping US military support for Israel is outside court’s jurisdiction

    A federal court in California has ruled that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza “plausibly” amounts to genocide, but dismissed a case aimed at stopping US military support for Israel as being outside the court’s jurisdiction.

    “There are rare cases in which the preferred outcome is inaccessible to the court. This is one of those cases,” the US district court in the northern district of California ruled. “The court is bound by precedent and the division of our coordinate branches of government to abstain from exercising jurisdiction in this matter.

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

  • LGBTQ+ advocacy group records 2023 as ‘most damaging and destructive’ year

    Human Rights Campaign recorded the introduction of 550 bills last year, with more than half targeting LGBTQ+ youth

    Citing what it calls “the most damaging and destructive legislative session on record”, the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign (HRC) on Tuesday published its annual state-by-state scorecard of policies, laws and services.

    The 2023 state equality index documents a broadening push towards “state-sanctioned discrimination” – the elimination or restriction of rights and protections for trans and non-binary communities in Republican-controlled states, which the HRC had already declared a national emergency.

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