Category Archives: Human rights

Rights groups call on Laos to release lawyer held after fleeing China

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Sixty-eight organisations sign letter amid fears Lu Siwei could be deported at request of Chinese authorities

Sixty-eight human rights groups have signed an open letter calling on the Laos government to release Lu Siwei, a Chinese former human rights lawyer detained by Laotian police near Vientiane last week.

Lu was seized by police on Friday as he attempted to board a train from Laos to Thailand, where he planned to catch a flight to the US to join his wife and daughter. Nearly one week later, he appears to still be held in Laotian immigration detention, despite reportedly being told that he would be deported to China.

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Foreign Office failed to notice torture of British academic in UAE, watchdog finds

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Parliamentary ombudsman says Matthew Hedges was let down by UK government during imprisonment

The UK’s parliamentary ombudsman has found that the Foreign Office “failed to notice signs of torture” when officials visited a British academic imprisoned in the United Arab Emirates.

Matthew Hedges was convicted on spying charges by the UAE in 2018 after travelling to Dubai to conduct research for his PhD at Durham University. He spent six months in prison, where he has said he had been handcuffed, drugged and questioned for hours, before being pardoned from a life sentence for spying.

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Pakistan government faces backlash over ‘draconian’ arrest powers

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Amendment to bill would allow intelligence agencies to search ‘enemies’ and their premises without warrant

The Pakistan government is facing a backlash from MPs and senators after introducing an amendment to a colonial-era secrets act that critics have said will grant “draconian” powers to its military intelligence agency to detain and arrest citizens with impunity.

The amendment was quietly added in a parliamentary session and passed without providing copies to MPs, creating concern among parliamentarians on both sides of the aisle.

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Aung San Suu Kyi’s partial ‘pardon’ still means 27-year sentence

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Human rights groups say Myanmar military’s move to drop five of ousted leader’s convictions is meaningless

Even with a partial pardon announced this week by Myanmar’s military junta, Aung San Suu Kyi still faces the prospect of being kept in detention until she is more than 100 years old, if she lives that long.

She has been held by the military since it seized power in a coup on 1 February 2021, and has been convicted of 19 offences – from sedition and illegal possession of walkie-talkies, to breaking pandemic rules and electoral fraud.

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Home Office secretly backs facial recognition technology to curb shoplifting

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Covert government strategy to install electronic surveillance in shops raises issues around bias and data, and contrasts sharply with the EU ban to keep AI out of public spaces

Home Office officials have drawn up secret plans to lobby the independent privacy regulator in an attempt to push the rollout of controversial facial recognition technology into high street shops and supermarkets, internal government minutes seen by the Observer reveal.

The covert strategy was agreed during a closed-door meeting on 8 March between policing minister Chris Philp, senior Home Office officials and the private firm Facewatch, whose facial recognition cameras have provoked fierce opposition after being installed in shops.

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Human rights lawyer fleeing China is arrested in Laos

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Activists and family members fear Lu Siwei will be deported back to China, where he could be sent to prison

A Chinese rights lawyer stripped of his licence for taking on sensitive cases has been arrested in Laos, and activists and family members are worried he will be deported back to China, where he could be jailed.

Lu Siwei was seized by Laotian police on Friday morning while boarding a train for Thailand. He was on his way to Bangkok to catch a flight to the US to join his wife and daughter.

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Satellite data sheds light on China’s detention facilities in Tibet

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Exclusive: China appears to have expanded use of high-security prisons as tool of repression in Tibet, researchers say

There has been a pattern of increased activity in recent years at high-security detention facilities in Tibet, according to a new study measuring night-time lighting usage, suggesting a potential rise in harsher imprisonments by Chinese authorities.

The report, by the Rand Europe research institute, said the findings added rare new clues about the Chinese government’s “stability maintenance” policies of control in the highly securitised Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), which it described as an “information black hole”.

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Home Office ordered to change rules that restrict help for trafficking victims

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Court rules all potential victims must be assessed for support, after policy disqualified people with criminal convictions

A high court judge has ordered the home secretary to change a key part of a trafficking policy introduced just months ago.

In an urgent hearing on Wednesday, lawyers representing trafficking victims said they were at risk of human rights violations such as slavery, servitude and forced labour if the policy continued.

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Ghana abolishes death penalty, with expected reprieve for 176 condemned prisoners

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Country joins growing list of African nations free of capital punishment, but execution remains for high treason

Ghana has become the 29th country in Africa to abolish the death penalty in a move hailed by human rights activists.

The decision means that the 176 people currently on death row, including six women, are likely to have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment.

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Revealed: Saudi Arabia’s $6bn spend on ‘sportswashing’

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Exclusive: Billions deployed since early 2021 in a move critics say is an attempt to distract from human rights record

Saudi Arabia has spent at least $6.3bn (£4.9bn) in sports deals since early 2021, more than quadruple the previous amount spent over a six-year period, in what critics have labelled an effort to distract from its human rights record.

Saudi Arabia has deployed billions from its Public Investment Fund over the last two-and-a-half years according to analysis by the Guardian, spending on sports at a scale that has completely changed professional golf and transformed the international transfer market for football.

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Baby dies after teargas fired at Rohingya trying to escape Indian detention centre

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Child’s death follows hunger strike at Jammu & Kashmir jail amid increasing hostility towards 40,000 refugees ahead of elections

A five-month-old girl has died after Indian forces fired teargas at Rohingya refugees trying to escape a detention centre where they have been held for more than two years.

Videos – sent to Rohingya activists by detainees at Hiranagar jail, now operating as a holding centre – appear to show women and men amid clouds of teargas. About 270 Rohingya detainees at the centre, in the Indian-administered territory of Jammu & Kashmir, have been on hunger strike since April over their detention.

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Iran authorities ban film festival over poster of actor without hijab

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Government blocks event after release of publicity featuring Susan Taslimi in 1982 film The Death of Yazdgerd

Iranian authorities have banned a film festival that issued a publicity poster featuring an actor who was not wearing a hijab, state media has reported.

The move came after the Iranian Short Film Association (ISFA) released a poster for its upcoming short-film festival featuring the Iranian actor Susan Taslimi in the 1982 film The Death of Yazdgerd.

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Bodies of 87 people found in Sudan mass grave, says UN

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Alleged victims of Sudanese paramilitary and allied militia found in shallow grave in West Darfur

At least 87 people including ethnic Masalits have been found buried in a mass grave in Sudan’s West Darfur, the UN human rights office has said, adding that it had credible information that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) were responsible.

RSF officials denied any involvement, saying the paramilitary group was not a party to the conflict in West Darfur.

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Democracy activist Chau Van Kham says he wasn’t afraid of dying in Vietnamese prison

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In his first public comments since being released from prison, Chau thanked supporters including some kinder jail guards

The pro-democracy activist Chau Van Kham says he was not afraid of dying in a Vietnamese jail and he knew supporters in Australia would never give up on him.

In his first comments since returning to Australia, Chau on Thursday thanked everyone who had advocated for him throughout his four-and-a-half-year ordeal.

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Ugandan president and son accused of sponsoring violence in ICC testimony

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Documents containing allegations of torture filed to court in support of complaint made by Bobi Wine

The Uganda president, Yoweri Museveni, and his son Muhoozi Kainerugaba have been accused of sponsoring violence and abusing critics in harrowing testimony filed before the international criminal court.

The submissions contain detailed allegations of the torture of opposition figures and activists who report being arrested arbitrarily and being held incommunicado in “torture centres”, where they were reportedly interrogated about their links with the opposition figure Bobi Wine and subjected to physical harm and indignifying treatment.

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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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