Category Archives: Human rights

Australian democracy activist Chau Van Kham released from Vietnam jail and reunited with family

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Seventy-four-year-old’s health had deteriorated in prison and he was released on humanitarian grounds

The Australian democracy activist Chau Van Kham has been released from a Vietnamese jail and returned to his home in Sydney.

“Chau Van Kham has returned to Australia a free man,” his family said. “We share the happy news that Chau Van Kham is well and has returned to his family today.”

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Police using live facial recognition at British Grand Prix

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Northamptonshire force says technology adds ‘extra layer of security’ at Silverstone for F1 race

Police are using live facial recognition (LFR) to scan the faces of people attending the British Grand Prix at Silverstone this weekend.

Northamptonshire police were deploying the technology on Saturday and Sunday to provide “an extra layer of security” at the Formula One race, which 450,000 people were expected to attend, the force said.

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Battle over Rwanda deportations to continue as No 10 gears up for appeal

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Sunak insists Rwanda is safe country to be sent to after court rules in favour of charities and 10 asylum seekers

The bitter legal battle over the government’s flagship immigration policy is set to reach new heights after Downing Street insisted it would fight to overturn a ruling that sending refugees to Rwanda was unlawful.

Charities and others were jubilant on Thursday after judges at the court of appeal ruled in favour of campaign groups and 10 affected asylum seekers, while the opposition claimed the policy at heart of Rishi Sunak’s “Stop the Boats” pledge was now unravelling.

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UN says Russian forces have tortured and executed civilians in Ukraine

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Report details widespread and systematic torture with summary executions of more than 70 people

Russian forces have carried out widespread and systematic torture of civilians detained in connection with their attack on Ukraine, summarily executing more than 70 of them, the UN human rights office said on Tuesday.

It interviewed hundreds of victims and witnesses for a report detailing more than 900 cases of civilians, including children and elderly people, being arbitrarily detained in the conflict, most of them by Russia. The vast majority of those interviewed said they were tortured and in some cases subjected to sexual violence during detention by Russian forces, the head of the UN human rights office in Ukraine said.

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Urgent action needed to protect ‘dying’ Kenyan domestic workers in Gulf, say rights groups

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Deaths and alleged abuse of Kenyan women in Saudi Arabia fuels demands for Nairobi to act on human rights

Rights groups have expressed concern that not enough has been done to address the alleged mistreatment of domestic workers in Gulf states, such as Saudi Arabia, after the Kenyan government moved to secure work opportunities abroad for its citizens.

“This is a matter of grave public interest,” said John Mwariri, a lawyer at Kituo cha Sheria, a legal aid organisation. “Many of our Kenyan citizens have been abused and are dying there. There is an urgent need for protections.”

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Kenya human rights commission to investigate alleged killings on pineapple farm

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Commission ‘concerned and disturbed’ by claims of lethal violence by security guards on Del Monte farm

Kenya’s national human rights body has launched an investigation into allegations of killings and assaults by security guards at a Del Monte pineapple farm in Thika that supplies most British supermarkets.

A joint investigation by the Guardian and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) published earlier this week uncovered claims from villagers of violence by guards at the plantation, including three alleged killings in the last four years.

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China is state most dangerous to its own citizens’ civil rights, report finds

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China scores better on food, health and housing, while crackdowns have worsened Hong Kong’s ratings

China has been ranked as the worst country in the world for safety from the state and the right to assembly, in a human rights report that tracks social, economic and political freedoms.

The Human Rights Measurement Initiative (HRMI), a New Zealand-based project, has been monitoring various countries’ human rights performance since 2017.

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Australia’s use of hotels for immigration detention found to have ‘devastating’ health effects

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At the time of the Australian Human Rights Commission’s inspections, the longest continuous detention in a hotel was 634 days

The Australian government’s use of city hotels as ad hoc immigration detention centres – including confining people for nearly two years – has “devastating impacts on people’s mental and physical health”, the Australian Human Rights Commission has found.

In a report published on Wednesday morning, the commission argued that the use of hotels to incarcerate people remained a “regularised” part of Australia’s immigration infrastructure, rather than a measure of last resort, even though the number of people detained – and the length of their detention – has steadily decreased.

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Gillian Anderson and Stanley Tucci back calls to rescue British families in Syria

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Estimated 60 children among those trapped in detention camps since Islamic State collapse

A group of celebrities including Olivia Colman, Stephen Fry and Gillian Anderson have called on ministers to rescue and bring home British families trapped in detention camps in north-east Syria.

The stars, along with various NGOs including War Child UK and Human Rights Watch, the Tory peer Sayeeda Warsi and several national security experts, have signed an open letter to the UK government appealing for the rescue of approximately 25 British families, including an estimated 60 children most of whom are under 10 years old, who are languishing in the camps.

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Calls for restorative justice after ‘dehumanising’ incidents in Victoria’s mental health care system

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‘I chewed my way through the restraints in front of two security guards who were laughing at me’, says one woman

When Victoria’s mental health royal commission made landmark findings of systemic human rights breaches in 2021, there was little that surprised Anna*.

At the time of the inquiry’s hearings, Anna had numerous stints in the psychiatric wards of Victorian public hospitals. She said the experiences were “dehumanising” and often chipped away at her will to live.

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Thousands of Afghan refugees in UK set to be made homeless

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Downing Street crisis meeting hears that about 8,000 who arrived under Operation Warm Welcome will be evicted this summer with nowhere to go

Thousands of Afghan refugees in the UK face homelessness this summer, the government was warned last week at a secret crisis meeting in Downing Street.

Council officials told No 10 and Home Office civil servants that about 8,000 Afghan refugees, allowed into the country in 2021 under the slogan Operation Warm Welcome, are due to be evicted from hotels as early as August because of a government deadline, yet have nowhere to go.

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£19.3bn of fossil fuels imported by UK from authoritarian states in year since Ukraine war

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As Russian oil and gas imports fell petrostates including UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia increased exports to UK

UK fossil fuel imports from authoritarian petrostates surged to £19.3bn in the year following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it can be revealed.

Efforts to end the purchasing of oil and gas from Russia appear to have resulted in a surge in imports from other authoritarian regimes, including Algeria, Bahrain, Kuwait, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to data from the Office for National Statistics analysed by DeSmog.

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Zelenskiy steps up criticism of International Red Cross over inaction at Kakhovka dam

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Ukrainian president’s remarks echo previous comments about international bodies’ failure to intervene more decisively

Volodymyr Zelenskiy – well schooled in chiding the west for being slow in providing help – has shifted his line of criticism from the pace at which arms has been reaching his country to the slow international response to the humanitarian and ecological disaster caused by the breach of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam.

Before visiting the flood-affected areas on Thursday, he used his nightly address to say: “Large-scale efforts are needed. We need international organisations, such as the International Committee on Red Cross, to immediately join the rescue operation and help the people in the occupied part of Kherson region. Each person that dies there is a verdict on the existing international architecture and international organisations that have forgotten how to save lives. If there is no international organisation in the area of this disaster now, it means it does not exist at all and that it is incapable of functioning.”

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Threatened Saudi dissident told to live like Edward Snowden by Met police

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Col Rabih Alenezi received advice after reporting death threats, of which he says he receives 50 a week

A Saudi Arabian dissident living in London was told to “emulate” the life of the US whistleblower Edward Snowden by a Metropolitan police officer, amid death threats he received after fleeing his country.

Col Rabih Alenezi, 44, had been a senior official in Saudi Arabia’s security service for two decades, but sought asylum in the UK after he claimed to have been ordered to carry out human rights violations. His life was threatened for criticising the regime of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

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Saudi Arabia warns Snapchat users that ‘insulting’ regime is a criminal offense

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Users of the social media app have faced legal consequences for posts – some private – that are critical of Saudi authorities

Saudi state media issued an explicit warning that it is a criminal offense to “insult” authorities using social media apps such as Snapchat, the California-based messaging app whose chief executive recently forged a new “cooperation” deal with the kingdom’s culture ministry.

The threat – which was originally televised in April and then deleted – has gained new resonance as more cases emerge in which Snapchat users and influencers in the kingdom have been arrested by authorities and, in some cases, sentenced to decades-long prison sentences.

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Australian child pleads with prime minister to be rescued from Syrian detention camp

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Exclusive: ‘I have spent half my life in a tent closed off by gates like a prison,’ says the child, who is under 10, in a voice message to Anthony Albanese

An Australian child trapped in a Syrian detention camp has pleaded directly with prime minister Anthony Albanese to be rescued and brought home.

“I am one of the children left behind in Roj camp and I have spent half my life in a tent closed off by gates like a prison,” a voice message sent to the prime minister’s office says. “I have never been to school, laid in grass or climbed a tree.”

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Ethiopian Airlines faces legal case over claims it blocks Tigrayans from travel

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Passengers accuse airline of refusing to sell tickets to people from the ethnic minority to fly from northern region to Addis Ababa

A civil society organisation has launched a lawsuit against Ethiopian Airlines, accusing the state-owned carrier of discriminating against ethnic Tigrayans.

The suit brought by Human Rights First, a local NGO, claims the airline is preventing “Tigrayans aged 15 to 60” from buying tickets for flights from the northern Tigray region to Addis Ababa, the federal capital. It also claims the company has increased ticket prices for the route as a form of “collective sanction” against the people of Tigray.

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Stateless Rohingya could soon be the ‘new Palestinians’, top UN official warns

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Special rapporteur Olivier De Shutter calls for action on neglected crisis after finding ‘absolutely terrible’ conditions on visit to Cox’s Bazar camps in Bangladesh

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are at risk of becoming “the new Palestinians”, according to a UN head, who said they are trapped in a protracted and increasingly neglected crisis.

Olivier De Schutter, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said the almost 1 million people living in overcrowded camps in Cox’s Bazar should be given the right to work in their host country of Bangladesh, and that forcing them to rely on dwindling international support was not sustainable.

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Ugandan president signs anti-LGBTQ+ law with death penalty for same-sex acts

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Global outcry over Museveni’s assent to draconian new anti-gay law, condemned as a ‘permission slip for hate and dehumanisation’


Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, has signed into law the world’s harshest anti-LGBTQ+ bill, which allows the death penalty for homosexual acts. The move immediately drew widespread international outrage as well as condemnation from many Ugandans.

Early on Monday, the speaker of the Ugandan parliament, Anita Annet Among, released a statement on social media confirming Museveni had assented to the law first passed by MPs in March. It imposes the death penalty or life imprisonment for certain same-sex acts, up to 20 years in prison for “recruitment, promotion and funding” of same-sex “activities”, and anyone convicted of “attempted aggravated homosexuality” faces a 14-year sentence.

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Number of people prosecuted in China’s courts up 12% in five years, report shows

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Experts point to crackdown on national security and legal system that encourages guilty pleas

Chinese courts prosecuted 8.3 million people in the five years to 2022, a 12% increase on the previous period. There was also a nearly 20% increase in the number of protests against court rulings.

The figures released by the supreme people’s procuratorate (SPP) in March give a glimpse of how China’s notoriously opaque justice system has operated in recent years, amid a tightening domestic security environment.

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