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Category: US news

  • Harry and Meghan win racial justice and mental health award

    Duke and Duchess of Sussex honoured for their activism days ahead of revelatory Netflix show

    A US human rights charity has awarded Harry and Meghan its Ripple of Hope award for their activism on racial justice and mental health.

    In a statement celebrating their award, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex said “a ripple of hope can turn into a wave of change”. The couple received the award on Tuesday night in New York, two days before the release of a tell-all Netflix show expected to include damning revelations about the royal family.

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  • UN vote to ignore human rights abuses in China leaves west in dead end

    Result not to debate its own damning report shows many states are unwilling to take sides in power struggle between China and west

    In a display of raw Chinese political power, the UN has voted to turn its back on a report written by its own human rights commissioner that accused Beijing of serious human rights abuses and possible crimes against humanity in Xinjiang province.

    The 47-strong UN human rights council meeting in Geneva voted on Thursday by 19 to 17 to reject an American-led call for a debate on the report at the next human rights council in spring. Eleven countries abstained. A simple majority was required.

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

  • EU and US consider further sanctions on Iran over protest crackdown

    Demonstrators call for greater support from west and help communicating with outside world

    The EU and the US are considering further sanctions against Iran over the attempt to suppress demonstrations and strikes in universities over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in a police detention centre.

    Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, condemned Iran’s disproportionate use of force and said all options would be on the table at the next meeting of EU foreign affairs ministers. The main options are helping to prevent the internet being shut by Iran, and further economic sanctions.

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

  • Oklahoma man executed after Republican governor denies clemency

    James Coddington, 50, convicted of 1997 killing, given lethal injection at state penitentiary after parole plea falls on deaf ears

    Oklahoma executed a man on Thursday for a 1997 killing, after the Republican governor rejected his appeal for clemency and a recommendation from the state pardon and parole board that his life be spared.

    James Coddington, 50, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in McAlester and was pronounced dead at 10.16am.

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  • ‘I was worried I had been permanently mutilated’: what abortion was like before Roe v Wade

    In 1968, Ann Hill discovered she was pregnant while a law student. With abortion illegal, she was forced to have a backstreet operation. She explains how it inspired her to become a women’s rights campaigner

    When the doctor told me I was pregnant, he said most women were “extremely happy” with this news. I said: “Well, I’m not, and I would like to end this pregnancy.” He told me I would have to go before a committee at the hospital to determine whether a termination was necessary to save my life, including a psychiatrist’s report, and that it would take several weeks. And what would be the chance they would agree? “I can’t help you,” he said.

    It was 1968 and I was 22, living in New Haven, Connecticut, and in my first month at Yale Law School. I knew straight away that I was not going to carry a pregnancy to term, that I was very early on in the pregnancy and that it should not be a major procedure.

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

  • ‘Any number of rights could be next’ if Roe v Wade goes, says Buttigieg

    US transportation secretary says supreme court’s ruling could determine future generations’ freedoms

    Pete Buttigieg, the US transportation secretary and the first openly gay member of a US administration, has expressed his worry that the expected overturning by the supreme court of the 1973 landmark decision which made abortion legal, may be the start of a series of eliminations of other groundbreaking rights and protections.

    Earlier this month a leaked document showed that five conservatives on the nine-justice supreme court had voted to reverse their predecessors’ ruling in Roe v Wade nearly 50 years ago. The provisional ruling could lead to abortion being outlawed in more than half of US states unless it is changed substantially before becoming final.

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

  • UN human rights commissioner criticised over planned Xinjiang visit

    Exclusive: Politicians accuse China of organising a ‘Potemkin-style tour’ for Michelle Bachelet

    A group of 40 politicians from 18 countries have told the UN high commissioner for human rights that she risks causing lasting damage to the credibility of her office if she goes ahead with a visit to China’s Xinjiang region next week.

    Michelle Bachelet is scheduled to visit Kashgar and Ürümqi in Xinjiang during her trip, which starts on Monday. Human rights organisations say China has forced an estimated 1 million or more people into internment camps and prisons in the region. The US and a number of other western countries have described China’s treatment of the Uyghur minority living there as genocidal, a charge Beijing calls the “lie of the century”.

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

  • Through the Trumpian looking glass, forcing women to die from illegal abortions is ‘pro-life’ | Marina Hyde

    The US supreme court leak shows that the levers of power are pulled by those with no skin in the game, at the expense of those with an entire uterus in it

    An American girl born this week will have fewer rights than an American girl born in 1973. This is the likely import of the leaked US supreme court draft opinion on abortion rights – and cause for a huge thank-you-very-much to all those guys who suggested that women marching on Washington in January 2017 were “overreacting” to the election of Donald Trump. Please make sure to tell women again when they are being overemotional – even as they sit and watch one of Trump’s justice picks scream and sob his way through his own confirmation hearings. In the meantime, resign yourself to yet another “quirk” of the looking-glass world Trump has created. Of course – OF COURSE – women’s access to abortion would end up being restricted or removed by the deliberate decisions of a man widely imagined to have personally helped to keep the Manhattan abortion sector afloat for decades.

    I’m kidding, of course! We have absolutely no idea whether abortion services have or haven’t ever been accessed by anyone connected with a draft-avoider who described avoiding STDs in the 80s as “my personal Vietnam”. “That’s an interesting question,” Trump replied to the New York Times when asked, during the 2016 campaign, if he’d ever been involved with a woman who had undergone a termination during their relationship. “What’s your next question?”

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

  • Twitter takeover: EU warns Elon Musk must comply or face sanctions

    Internal market commissioner raised concerns that hate speech will increase on the platform

    The EU has warned Elon Musk that Twitter must “comply with our rules” or face sanctions that range from fines to a total ban, as concerns were raised that hate speech will increase on the platform under his ownership.

    The world’s richest man has agreed a $44bn (£34bn) deal to buy the social media network, which will hand control of a platform with 217 million users to a self-confessed “free speech absolutist”.

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

  • Will Putin face genocide charges over Ukraine atrocities?

    Joe Biden has accused the Russian president of ‘trying to wipe out the idea of even being Ukrainian’

    Joe Biden has upped the ante in his criticisms of Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine by accusing him of genocide, saying the Russian leader is “trying to wipe out the idea of even being Ukrainian”. But how significant is the allegation and how likely is Putin to face genocide charges?

    Genocide is one of four crimes prosecuted by the international criminal court (ICC) and generally considered to be the most grave. The court defines it as being “characterised by the specific intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group by killing its members or by other means: causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”.

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

  • US declares Myanmar army committed genocide against Rohingya

    Designation could put global pressure on military-led government, which faces accusations at international court of justice

    The US has declared Myanmar’s mass killing of the Rohingya Muslim population to be a “genocide”.

    The secretary of state, Antony Blinken, made the announcement at the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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

  • Hospitals under fire and hard-won abortion rights: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

    A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from International Women’s Day in Istanbul to ‘kill the bill’ protests in Cambridge

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

  • Tens of thousands join rallies around the world in support of Ukraine

    Demonstrators gathered in cities across Europe, the US and South America to demand an end to Russia’s invasion

    Tens of thousands of people demonstrated in cities including Santiago, Vancouver Paris and New York in support of Ukraine, demanding an end to Russia’s invasion.

    The protesters rallied on Saturday against Russian president Vladimir Putin’s attack, which began on 24 February and appeared to be entering a new phase with escalating bombardment.

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

  • Lawsuit aims to stop Texas investigating parents seeking care for trans children

    Lawsuit filed after state’s governor and attorney general called medically necessary gender-affirming care ‘child abuse’

    America’s largest civil rights non-profit has filed a lawsuit asking a Texas state court to block officials from investigating parents who seek medically necessary gender-affirming care for their children.

    The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), ACLU of Texas and Lambda Legal, named the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, as a defendant, along with the Texas department of family and protective services (DFPS) and its commissioner, Jaime Masters.

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

  • Greta stands with Sami and Navalny on trial again: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

    A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Mexico

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

  • Tragic consequences of repatriating asylum seekers | Letter

    Officials often underestimate the dangers faced by failed asylum seekers who are forcibly sent home, writes Jackie Fearnley

    The recent Human Rights Watch report on the harm done to Cameroonian asylum seekers, both while they were trying to make their claims in the US and when repatriated in a blaze of publicity, should be required reading for all asylum decision-makers (African migrants deported in Trump era suffered abuse on return, 10 February).

    From my experience of helping Cameroonian torture survivors over the past 14 years, I have noted that Home Office decision-makers, and many judges, can fatally underestimate the degree of risk attached to the forcible return process, particularly as failed asylum seekers are viewed as having brought the country into disrepute and can be punished with imprisonment.

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

  • African migrants deported in Trump era suffered abuse on return, report finds

    A Human Rights Watch report found Cameroonian asylum-seekers forcibly flown back home suffered imprisonment, torture and rape

    Cameroonian asylum-seekers deported by the Trump administration suffered imprisonment, torture and rape on their return, and many were forced in to hiding or fleeing the country once more, according to a new report.

    In the last months of the Trump administration, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency stepped up its deportations of African migrants, especially Cameroonians. Over 80 of them were flown to Cameroon in October and November 2020 alone, amid allegations of abuse, in which Ice detainees said they had been forced to sign or fingerprint documents believed to be waivers agreeing to their deportation.

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

  • General accused of rights abuses made Ugandan head of police

    Maj Gen Abel Kandiho is blacklisted by US for presiding over ‘horrific’ targeting of opposition activists

    Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, has appointed a former military intelligence chief, who is blacklisted by the US over alleged rights violations, to lead the country’s feared police force.

    Uganda’s police and military have been accused of widespread human rights abuses, including arbitrary detention, torture and assassination. Much of the repression has been directed at opposition activists contesting the 36-year rule of Museveni.

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

  • For sale: CIA ‘black site’ where terror suspects were tortured in Lithuania

    Government prepares to sell barn known as Project No 2 or Detention Site Violet, which has windowless, soundproof rooms

    A menacing steel barn outside the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius where CIA terror suspects were once held in solitary confinement, subjected to constant light and high-intensity noise, is soon to go on the market.

    The government’s real estate fund, which handles assets no longer needed by the state, said on Monday it was preparing to sell the notorious former “black site”, known as Project No 2 or Detention Site Violet, for an as-yet unknown price.

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

  • The Biden doctrine: Ukraine gaffe sums up mixed year of foreign policy

    On Russia and Putin, the president said the quiet part loud. Re-engagement has been welcomed but the exit from Afghanistan was a disaster. Analysts see much to do to rebuild US credibility

    Joe Biden marked his first anniversary in office with a gaffe over Ukraine that undid weeks of disciplined messaging and diplomatic preparation.

    The president’s suggestion that a “minor incursion” by Russia might split Nato over how to respond sent the White House into frantic damage limitation mode.

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

  • Which is more dysfunctional – the US or the UK? I’ve created a Global Embarrassment Index to figure it out | Arwa Mahdawi

    Living in the US, I have always seized every opportunity to insist things are better in Blighty. But now both countries look ludicrous

    For years now I have been living with a chronic condition that I’ve finally been able to diagnose as Privileged Immigrant Derangement Syndrome (PIDS). Let me explain: more than a decade ago I left my native Britain to go and work in New York. I wasn’t fleeing persecution, poverty, or life in a failed state; I just wanted to live in the US. There were more opportunities, I didn’t have to navigate the suffocating class system, and, most importantly, my English accent gave me a competitive edge. Women swooned at my vowel sounds (I’m not making that up: they swooned … OK, I promise at least one woman swooned) and everyone assumed I was on tea-drinking terms with the Queen.

    Anyway, that’s the PI bit of PIDS. The D bit is this: when you spend extended time away from your home country, it’s easy to build up a romanticised version of it in your head. I became a cheerleader for all things British; I even bought a pair of union jack wellies, and wore them with pride whenever it rained. As my long-suffering American wife can attest, I seized every opportunity to say how much better things were in Blighty than Stateside. We had a superior healthcare system; we weren’t gun-nuts?; our infrastructure was better; our political system wasn’t as drenched with money, and was less corrupt. Even our rain was better. On and on I went about how the UK was infinitely superior to the US.

    Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

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

  • Desmond Tutu’s funeral and Kazakhstan clashes: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

    A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to Hong Kong

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

  • Biden’s democracy summit must deliver on its aims to beat authoritarianism | Elise Labott

    Critics dismissed the virtual meeting of world leaders as all talk, with no clear benchmarks of what change is needed

    • Elise Labott is an adjunct professor at American University’s School of International Service

    Last week as Joe Biden invited about 110 leaders to a virtual Summit for Democracy, he sounded the alarm over the rising tide of authoritarianism, as well as leading discussion on how to counter democratic backslide. The president admitted the summit was less of a magic bullet than the start of a global conversation on how to stop further democratic rot – an attempt to “seed fertile ground for democracies to bloom around the world”.

    Critics dismissed the summit as an ideological (and cynical) ploy to enlist countries in Washington’s strategic competition with China, as well as to appease overseas powers eager to see US leadership on the world stage. Both charges have merit.

    Elise Labott is an adjunct professor at American University’s School of International Service and the founder and CEO of Zivvy Media

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

  • The Guardian view on China’s Winter Olympics: remember the Uyghurs | Editorial

    The IOC says it stays out of politics. But what is happening in Xinjiang is a fundamental matter of human rights

    The financial crisis of 2008 was the moment which cemented both China’s rise and its growing confidence as the west faltered. But the Olympics held in Beijing a few months earlier was the global symbol of its ascendancy: a coming-out party which proclaimed its return to the forefront of political and economic power, greeted with genuine international enthusiasm, despite the misgivings of dissidents.

    Fewer will celebrate the Winter Games due to kick off in Beijing in February. Last week, the UK and Canada joined the US and Australia in announcing a diplomatic boycott, and New Zealand has said it will not send anyone of ministerial level – to the wrath of China, which warned that countries will “pay a price” for the decision. (France will participate as usual, with Emmanuel Macron describing the boycott as “insignificant”, and much of Europe remains undecided). Concern for tennis champion and three-time Olympian Peng Shuai, since she alleged that a former senior leader had coerced her into sex, have magnified attention to China’s human rights record – and to the International Olympic Committee’s keenness to reassure the world that there is nothing to worry about, a repeated pattern.

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

  • Julian Assange can be extradited to US to face espionage charges, court rules

    WikiLeaks co-founder’s lawyers say they will seek to appeal, as Amnesty International says decision is a ‘travesty of justice’

    Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, according to the high court, as it overturned a judgment earlier this year and sparked condemnation from press freedom advocates.

    The decision deals a major blow to the WikiLeaks co-founder’s efforts to prevent his extradition to the US to face espionage charges, although his lawyers announced they would seek to appeal.

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

  • Saudi women’s rights activist sues three ex-US intel operatives over hacking for UAE

    Loujain al-Hathloul says actions of men on behalf of the UAE led to her iPhone being hacked and to her imprisonment and torture

    Loujain al-Hathloul, the prominent Saudi women’s rights activist, has filed a lawsuit against three former US intelligence and military officers who have admitted in a US court to helping carry out hacking operations on behalf of the United Arab Emirates.

    In her lawsuit, which was filed in a US district court in Oregon in conjunction with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Hathloul alleged that the actions of three men – Marc Baier, Ryan Adams, and Daniel Gericke – led to her iPhone being hacked and communication being exfiltrated by UAE security officials.

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

  • China says Australia, UK and US will ‘pay price’ for Winter Olympics action

    Beijing accuses nations of using Games ‘for political manipulation’ amid diplomatic boycotts

    China has said that Australia, Britain and the US will pay a price for their “mistaken acts” after deciding not to send government delegations to February’s Winter Olympics in Beijing, in the latest warning demonstrating China’s escalating diplomatic tensions with the US and its major allies.

    The US was the first to announce a boycott, saying on Monday its government officials would not attend the February Games because of China’s human rights “atrocities”, weeks after talks aimed at easing tension between the world’s two largest economies.

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

  • China accuses Australia of ‘posturing’ over diplomatic boycott of Winter Olympics

    Scott Morrison says athletes will compete in next year’s Games because sport and politics should not mix

    The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has confirmed his country’s officials will not attend the Beijing Winter Olympics, joining the US in a diplomatic boycott of next year’s Games and prompting accusations from Beijing of political posturing.

    Morrison told reporters in Sydney it was “not surprising”, given the deterioration in the diplomatic relationship between Australia and China, that officials would not attend next year’s winter Games.

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

  • US added to list of ‘backsliding’ democracies for first time

    ‘Visible deterioration’ in US civil liberties began in at least 2019, says international thinktank

    The US has been added to an annual list of “backsliding” democracies for the first time, the International IDEA thinktank has said, pointing to a “visible deterioration” it said began in 2019.

    Globally, more than one in four people live in a backsliding democracy, a proportion that rises to more than two in three with the addition of authoritarian or “hybrid” regimes, according to the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.

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

  • US reportedly plans diplomatic boycott China 2022 Winter Olympics

    Biden administration may not send official delegation to Beijing 2022, in protest at human rights abuses

    The US is going to stage a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics in China and will not send an official delegation in protest against human rights abuses, according to a report on Tuesday.

    The report comes the day after a virtual summit between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, in which multiple policy issues were raised but the Olympics were not mentioned, despite some earlier reports that Xi would deliver an invitation to the games.

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