Chief executive adopts unapologetic, defensive tone and refuses to resign
Carrie Lam’s announcement that a controversial extradition bill had been suspended reinforced the Hong Kong chief executive’s reputation as a hard-nosed leader who can “put up a good fight”.
Throughout her press conference on Saturday, Lam adopted a resolute, unapologetic and defensive tone that her critics labelled arrogant and insincere.
Continue reading...China’s power grab via a new extradition bill must be opposed by governments around the world, especially Britain’s
It took something out of the ordinary to provoke a million people in Hong Kong to take to the streets to demonstrate against proposed new extradition rules. Roughly one-sixth of the population demonstrated peacefully: families, young and old, lawyers, academics, students, professionals and manual workers.
What caused such an outpouring against a piece of legislation? Quite simply, the people of Hong Kong – not British, but Hong Kong Chinese – have seen their government connive with the Communist regime in Beijing to undermine their way of life and freedoms.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Yana Peel co-owns NSO Group that licensed Pegasus software to authoritarian regimes
A leading human rights campaigner and head of a prestigious London art gallery is the co-owner of an Israeli cyberweapons company whose software has allegedly been used by authoritarian regimes to spy on dissidents, the Guardian can reveal.
Yana Peel, the chief executive of the Serpentine Galleries and a self-proclaimed champion of free speech, co-owns NSO Group, a $1bn (£790m) Israeli tech firm, according to corporate records in the US and Luxembourg.
Continue reading...China, India and Bangladesh among otherwise thriving countries failing to make headway on issue affecting 152 million minors
Progress towards ending child labour has stalled in the countries most likely to be supplying goods to the west, a study has found.
Despite high economic growth and big improvements in education and development, countries such as China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia have made little progress in tackling child labour.
Continue reading...Reporters discovered Carlos Luis Malatto, accused of five counts of crimes against humanity, in Messina
Human rights groups have expressed outrage after a former Argentinian army officer accused of committing murder and forced disappearances during the 1976-83 military dictatorship was found enjoying a beach holiday in Sicily.
Reporters from la Repubblica discovered Lt Colonel Carlos Luis Malatto in a tourist village in the province of Messina, even though he is currently on trial in Rome for crimes committed in Argentina, which is also seeking his extradition.
Continue reading...British home secretary says final decision on WikiLeaks founder is ‘now with the courts’
The home secretary, Sajid Javid, has revealed he has signed a request for Julian Assange to be extradited to the US where he faces charges of computer hacking.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday, Javid said: “He’s rightly behind bars. There’s an extradition request from the US that is before the courts tomorrow but yesterday I signed the extradition order and certified it and that will be going in front of the courts tomorrow.”
Continue reading...Debate on bill temporarily abandoned after tens of thousands surround Legislative Council building
Continue reading...Thom Yorke describes hours of recordings from OK Computer sessions as ‘not v interesting’, while climate activists thank the band for ‘unprecedented support’
Radiohead have released a vast collection of unreleased tracks made during the sessions for 1997 album OK Computer, after a MiniDisc archive owned by frontman Thom Yorke was hacked last week by an unnamed person, who reportedly held the recordings to ransom for $150,000.
The band have now made the 18 MiniDisc recordings, most of them around an hour in length, available on Bandcamp for £18. Proceeds will go to climate activists Extinction Rebellion.
Continue reading...Murtaja Qureiris, 18, is on trial for charges including ‘sowing sedition’, says Amnesty
A young Saudi man, arrested when he was 13, could face execution for taking part in Shia-led protests as a child, Amnesty International has said.
Murtaja Qureiris, now 18, is on trial for charges that include joining a “terror group” and “sowing sedition”, according to the rights group. He was detained in September 2014 and held in solitary confinement for part of the time since.
Continue reading...Sally Challen was subjected to a false narrative by a criminal justice system that painted her as “a controlling and jealous lover who planned to kill her husband”, her son has said.
In doing so it failed to recognise the decades of abuse and coercive control she had suffered at his hands, David Challen writes in an article for today’s Observer that is heavily critical of how abused women continue to be viewed by the courts, a concern that women’s rights campaigners said they shared.
Continue reading...Trump administration’s ban on terminations is a crisis directed at women, warns Kate Gilmore
The US policy on abortion is a form of extremist hate that amounts to the torture of women, the UN deputy high commissioner for human rights told the Guardian.
The attack on women’s rights was a “crisis”, organised and well-resourced by very extremist groups.
Continue reading...Ruling prevents prosecutors from applying immediately for extradition warrant
An attempt to extradite Julian Assange to Sweden has suffered a setback after a court in Uppsala said he did not need to be detained.
The ruling by the district court prevents Swedish prosecutors from applying immediately for an extradition warrant for Assange to face an allegation of rape dating back to 2010. Assange denies the accusation.
Continue reading...Member states should face punitive action over deaths in Mediterranean, say lawyers
The EU and member states should be prosecuted for the deaths of thousands of migrants who drowned in the Mediterranean fleeing Libya, according to a detailed legal submission to the international criminal court (ICC).
The 245-page document calls for punitive action over the EU’s deterrence-based migration policy after 2014, which allegedly “intended to sacrifice the lives of migrants in distress at sea, with the sole objective of dissuading others in similar situation from seeking safe haven in Europe”.
Continue reading...Last Will provides advice to members on how to obtain lethal drug to end their lives
Belgian prosecutors are to investigate a right-to-die group that has been offering advice on the use of a “suicide powder”.
The Last Will group, which has about 23,000 paying members with an average age of 69, was blocked by the Dutch authorities last year from helping approximately 1,000 people purchase the lethal drug but continues to offer advice on legal ways to obtain it.
Continue reading...The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has spoken openly about the spectre of antisemitism in Germany. She told CNN that “We have always had a certain amount of antisemites among us ... Unfortunately there is to this day not a single synagogue, not a single day care centre for Jewish children, not a single school for Jewish children that does not need to be guarded by German policemen.” Her remarks came a week after the country’s ombudsman for antisemitism, Felix Klein, suggested that observant Jews would be wise not to wear kippahs (skullcaps) in public. Taken together, these developments might suggest that Germany is sliding back into its dreadful past. In fact, they are signs of a determination that this must not happen. The crime figures do not suggest there is a crisis under way – though crime statistics do not measure fear.
The Jews of Germany are alarmed. It is not just the success of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in recent elections that contributes to their feeling of unease. A short-lived campaign to ban circumcision in 2012 was the first alarm bell; large demonstrations against the Gaza war in 2014, in which hostility to Israel often seemed indistinguishable from antisemitism, was another. And they are aware of the rising currents of antisemitism around Europe, even if it takes different forms in different countries.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Campaign groups prepare legal challenge following ‘systemic denial’ of suffrage
The government is facing the prospect of being sued by campaigners for EU citizens in the UK and British nationals abroad who were denied a vote in the European parliament elections.
John Halford, a public law specialist at Bindmans, said this week’s electoral fiasco was something a democracy should not tolerate.
Continue reading...Julian Assange could face decades in a US prison after being charged with violating the Espionage Act by publishing classified information through WikiLeaks.
Prosecutors announced 17 additional charges against Assange for publishing hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic cables and files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Continue reading...The foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt has created a new role of ambassador for human rights, which, according to a Foreign Office statement, “demonstrates the UK’s commitment to defending human rights globally”. Plainly it does nothing of the sort. What it demonstrates is the government’s desperation to repair the reputational damage incurred as its support for the worst human rights abusers of the Middle East comes under increasing scrutiny.
Related: UK arms exports are still playing a central role in Yemen’s humanitarian crisis | Anna Stavrianakis
Continue reading...What Bryan Cox and Mary Ruck (Letters, 20 May) do not tell your readers about the claims for compensation by the Kenyan litigants they represented was that they were all dismissed by the judge, Sir Peter Stewart, after one of the longest trials in British legal history – 230 hearing days spread over four years. He concluded that the passage of time since the alleged ill-treatment was so great that it was impossible for the crown to mount a meaningful defence, especially in the absence of virtually any corroborative evidence.
Nearly all those alleged to have committed the claimed offences were either dead or not traceable. Moreover, almost none of those accused in these 40,000 claims was a member of the British army: policemen and prison warders were the alleged culprits in nearly all cases. Abuses in screening camps were repeatedly investigated at the time, and more than 100 policemen, home guards and prison warders were prosecuted, convicted and jailed. The army had almost nothing to do with screening and detention.
Continue reading...Ozcan Keles accused of spreading propaganda, in latest targeting of Erdoğan critics
A British barrister who has given evidence to parliament is facing possible extradition to Turkey on terrorism charges over his Twitter activity.
Ozcan Keles, who is of Turkish descent and holds UK citizenship, appeared at Westminster magistrates court on Monday accused of spreading propaganda online.
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