Category Archives: Human rights

Vietnam detains energy thinktank chief in latest arrest of environmental expert

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Ngo Thi To Nhien detained over charges of ‘appropriating documents’, a government spokesperson confirmed

Vietnam state media has confirmed the arrest of the director of an independent energy policy thinktank – the sixth expert working on environmental issues to be taken into custody in the past two years.

A rights group reported last month that Ngo Thi To Nhien, executive director of the Hanoi-based Vietnam Initiative for Energy Transition (Viet), had been detained, although at the time there was no official confirmation.

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Germany and Italy clash over proposed changes to shakeup of migration laws

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Hopes fade of deal being struck, with one sticking point being right to occasionally breach detention centre standards

European Union member states have failed to reach an agreement on changes to the bloc’s migration laws after Germany and Italy clashed over key proposals relating to human rights guarantees in detention centres and the role of NGOs in facilitating migrant arrivals.

But, as hopes faded on Thursday of a deal being struck, ministers said they expected “fine tuning” in coming days to lead to a pact that would apply in the event of a sudden refugee crisis such as that of 2015 when more than 1 million people arrived from Syria and beyond.

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Vietnam jails leading climate activist Hoang Thi Minh Hong for tax evasion

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Hong’s three-year sentence is the latest in a string of convictions for environmental campaigners in the country

A leading Vietnamese climate activist has been jailed for tax evasion, the latest environmentalist put behind bars by the country’s communist government.

A court in Ho Chi Minh City sentenced Hoang Thi Minh Hong to three years in prison for dodging $275,000 in taxes related to her environmental campaign group Change, her lawyer, Nguyen Van Tu, said.

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‘I had to drink my own urine to survive’: Africans tell of being forced into the desert at Tunisia border

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As EU prepares to send money as part of €1bn deal, people trying to reach north African country detail border ‘pushbacks’

Migrants from sub-Saharan Africa have spoken of their horror at being forcibly returned to remote desert regions where some have died of thirst as they attempt to cross the border into Tunisia.

As the European Union prepares to send money to Tunisia under a €1bn (£870m) migration deal, human rights groups are urging Brussels to take a tougher line on allegations that Tunisian authorities have been pushing people back to deserted border areas, often with fatal results.

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South African anti-migrant ‘vigilantes’ register as party for next year’s polls

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Operation Dudula changes tactics from evictions and violence, with plans to fight elections on platform of expelling foreigners

An anti-migrant vigilante organisation in South Africa has registered as a political party and plans to contest seats in next year’s general elections.

Operation Dudula, whose name means “to force out” in Zulu, wants all foreign nationals who are in the country unofficially to be deported.

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Unilever to make payments to Kenyan tea pickers over 2007 plantation attacks

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UK law firm Leigh Day says money given to 77 workers for murders and rapes ‘sidesteps’ multinational’s responsibility over attack

Unilever is to make payments to 77 tea pickers who worked on one of its plantations in Kenya that was targeted during post-election violence in 2007.

The UK law firm Leigh Day, representing the workers, said the London-based consumer goods multinational had agreed to make voluntary, or ex-gratia, payments to former workers at its subsidiary Unilever Tea Kenya, who were attacked by armed assailants at its plantation in Kericho.

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Chinese authorities reportedly sentence Uyghur professor to life in prison

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Human rights group says Rahile Dawut lost appeal after being convicted in 2018 on charges of promoting ‘splittism’

A leading Uyghur professor who disappeared six years ago is reported to have sentenced to life in prison by Chinese authorities for “endangering state security”.

Rahile Dawut, 57, who specialises in the study of Uyghur folklore and traditions and is considered an expert in her field, lost an appeal over her sentence after being convicted in 2018 on charges of promoting “splittism”, according to the US-based Dui Hua Foundation human rights group.

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UK one of 32 countries facing European court action over climate stance

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Six Portuguese young people claim inadequate policies to tackle global heating breach their human rights

A key plank of the UK government’s defence against the biggest climate legal action in the world next week has fallen away as a result of the U-turn by the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, on green policies.

The UK is one of 32 countries being taken to the European court of human rights on Wednesday by a group of Portuguese young people. They will argue in the grand chamber of the Strasbourg court that the nations’ policies to tackle global heating are inadequate and in breach of their human rights obligations.

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Iran approves stricter hijab bill targeting those who ‘mock’ dress code

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Protestors face 10-year jail terms under new hijab and chastity bill, which UN human rights body says is intended to suppress women into ‘total submission’

Iran’s parliament has approved a controversial new bill under which women face up to 10 years in prison if they continue to defy the country’s mandatory hijab rules.

As well as harsher penalties on women defying the strict dress code, the draft law also intends to identify those who “promote nudity [or] indecency” or “mock” the rules in a virtual or non-virtual space.

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Tigray atrocities continuing almost a year after ceasefire, UN experts warn

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Ethiopian government is failing to protect its citizens from ‘grave’ human rights abuses, amid rising violence and hate speech – report

Human rights abuses are still being committed in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region more than 10 months after a ceasefire formally ended the bloody civil war, according to a group of UN experts.

The latest report by the UN’s International Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia said the nation’s government was failing to protect its citizens from “grave and ongoing” human rights abuses being committed by militias and Eritrean troops, who fought alongside Ethiopia’s federal military and remain in border areas of Tigray.

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Leading critic of Egyptian state jailed for six months

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Free speech advocate Hisham Kassem sentenced for defaming former minister Kamal Abu Eita

A court in Cairo has sentenced a former newspaper publisher, free speech advocate and rights activist to six months in prison, in a trial observers say constitutes an attack on a leading critic of the Egyptian state.

Hisham Kassem, the former publisher of Al Masry Al Youm newspaper, received six months in detention and a fine of 20,000 Egyptian pounds (approximately £523) for slandering and defaming Kamal Abu Eita. Abu Eita is a former minister and current member of Egypt’s presidential pardon committee, tasked with granting clemency towards some of the tens of thousands of detainees in the Egyptian prison system.

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US and UK issue sanctions on Iran one year on from Mahsa Amini’s death

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Multiple rounds of sanctions mark anniversary of 22-year-old’s death in custody of Iran’s ‘morality police’

The US and Britain on Friday imposed sanctions on Iran on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the death of a Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, while in the custody of Iran’s “morality police”, which sparked months of anti-government protests that faced often violent crackdown.

Amini, 22, died on 16 September last year after being arrested for allegedly flouting the Islamic Republic’s mandatory dress code. Her death sparked months of anti-government protests that marked the biggest show of opposition to Iranian authorities in years. Iranian security forces have been deployed in her home town in anticipation of unrest this weekend.

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Bahraini human rights defender denied travel to kingdom to visit jailed father

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Maryam al-Khawaja fears her father, the political prisoner Abdulhadi al-Khawajar, will die soon after being denied medical treatment

A leading Bahraini human rights defender and the heads of two global rights groups have been prevented from boarding a flight to Manama, where they intended to try to get access to her father, one of Bahrain’s most prominent political prisoners.

“We were told they were not allowed to board us. Despite my being a Bahraini citizen, I was told I have to speak to Bahraini immigration … effectively we’re being denied boarding by British Airways on behalf of the Bahraini government,” said Maryam al-Khawaja, flanked by the head of Amnesty International, Agnès Callamard, and the acting head of Front Line Defenders, Olive Moore, in the departure area of Heathrow airport.

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Iran’s ‘gender apartheid’ bill could jail women for 10 years for not wearing hijab

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Shops that serve unveiled women could be shut under draft law UN human rights body says suppresses women into ‘total submission’

Women in Iran face up to 10 years in prison if they continue to defy the country’s mandatory hijab law, under harsher laws awaiting approval by authorities. Even businesses that serve women without a hijab face being shut down.

The stricter dress code, which amounts to “gender apartheid”, UN experts said, comes one year after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, who had been detained for allegedly wearing the Islamic headscarf incorrectly. Her death, after allegedly being beaten by police, led to the largest wave of popular unrest for years in Iran.

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Record numbers expected as Europe’s biggest arms fair opens in London

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Egypt, Vietnam and Indonesia among countries sending delegations to four-day DSEI at ExCeL

Europe’s biggest ever arms fair got under way in London on Tuesday with record numbers expected to attend, boosted by interest from countries with controversial human rights records.

Authoritarian Egypt and Vietnam are among those sending delegations, defence sources said, as well as Indonesia and India – all countries whose arms-buying strategies have been affected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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UK decides not to call for release of Briton held in India on terror charges

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Public demand for Jagtar Singh Johal to be set free is ‘not in his best interests’, says Asia minister

The UK government has decided not to call for the release of a British man held in an Indian jail for five years, saying it would not be in his best interests.

There have been repeated calls for Britain to do more to secure the release of Jagtar Singh Johal, who claims to have been tortured and forced to make a confession. He faces terrorism charges and the first stages of his trial have just started after repeated delays caused by disputes over evidence.

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Twitter ‘unfit’ for banking over alleged complicity in Saudi rights abuses

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Lawyers for family say Saudi government took brother’s data in breach and ‘arrested, tortured, and imprisoned’ him and others

The company formerly known as Twitter is “unfit” to hold banking licenses because of its alleged “intentional complicity” with human rights violations in Saudi Arabia and treatment of users’ personal data, according to an open letter sent to federal and state banking regulators that was signed by a law firm representing a Saudi victim’s family.

The allegations by lawyers representing Areej al-Sadhan, whose brother Abdulrahman was one of thousands of Saudis whose confidential personal information was obtained by Saudi agents posing as Twitter employees in 2014-15, comes as Twitter Payments LLC, a subsidiary of X (the company formerly known as Twitter), is in the process of applying for money-transmitter licenses across the US.

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Ethiopian troops accused of mass killings of civilians in Amhara region

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Exclusive: Witnesses say federal forces have been looting villages and shooting farmers in their hunt for defiant Fano militiamen

Ethiopian soldiers killed more than 70 civilians and looted properties in a town in Amhara, multiple witnesses have claimed.

The killings took place in Majete, a rural town in north-eastern Ethiopia, after two weeks of heavy fighting between federal soldiers and the Fano, an Amhara militia.

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UN highlights ‘psychological harm’ to UK man jailed since 2012 for phone theft

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Exclusive: Expert repeats call to review indefinite sentences such as Thomas White’s, whose family says now suffers from psychosis

A UN torture expert has called the case of a man driven to psychosis after being jailed in the UK for more than a decade for stealing a mobile phone “emblematic of the psychological harm” caused by indeterminate sentences.

Thomas White was handed an imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentence in 2012 for stealing a mobile phone – four months before such prison terms were abolished. He has been in jail ever since after initially receiving a minimum two-year tariff.

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UK solar could be ‘dumping ground’ for products of Chinese forced labour, ministers warned

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Energy bill amendment requires large solar energy projects to prove supply chain free of slave labour

The UK risks becoming a dumping ground for the products of forced labour from Xinjiang province in China if it rejects reforms proposed by members of the foreign affairs select committee with cross-party support, ministers have been warned.

An amendment to the energy bill, due to be debated on Tuesday, would require solar energy companies to prove that their supply chains are free of slave labour. The Xinjiang region is the source of 35%-40% of the world’s solar-grade polysilicon, the key raw material in the solar photovoltaic supply chain.

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