Category Archives: Human rights

Australian activist Drew Pavlou arrested in London but denies sending Chinese embassy bomb threat

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Pavlou says the emailed threat was intended to frame him after he staged a peaceful protest carrying a Uyghur flag outside the embassy

Australian activist Drew Pavlou has been arrested in the UK over a false “bomb threat” delivered to the Chinese embassy in London that he claims came from a fake email address designed to frame him.

Pavlou said the “absurd” email claimed he would blow up the embassy over Beijing’s oppression of its Uyghur Muslim minority, but that it was confected by the embassy in order to have him arrested.

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Kenyan police officers found guilty of murder of three including human rights lawyer

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Four found guilty by a Nairobi court six years after murders of Willie Kimani, Josephat Mwenda and Joseph Muiruri prompted protests in Kenya

Three police officers in Kenya have been found guilty of murdering three men, including human rights lawyer Willie Kimani, six years after their bodies were found in a river.

Justice Jessie Lessit found police officers Fredrick Leliman, Stephen Cheburet and Sylvia Wanjiku as well as police informer Peter Ngugi guilty of murdering Kimani, his client Josephat Mwenda and taxi driver Joseph Muiruri on 23 June 2016.

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Taliban presiding over extensive rights abuses in Afghanistan, says UN

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Allegations include 160 killings of ex-government officials and security forces, torture and punishments

Taliban authorities have presided over widespread human rights abuses since they took control of Afghanistan last August, the UN said, including 160 killings of former government officials and members of the security forces, and dozens of cases of torture, arbitrary arrests and inhumane punishments.

A UN report, released on the day an Australian journalist said she had been detained in Kabul and forced to tweet a retraction of her reporting, also detailed a broad assault on the press. In total 173 media workers were affected by abuses including detention, threats, ill-treatment and assault.

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Nephew of jailed Hotel Rwanda dissident hacked by NSO spyware

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Latest findings suggest Rwandan government has deployed surveillance campaign against relatives of Paul Rusesabagina

The mobile phone of a Belgian citizen who is the nephew of Paul Rusesabagina, a jailed critic of the Rwandan government made famous by his portrayal in Hotel Rwanda, was hacked nearly a dozen times in 2020 using Israeli-made surveillance technology, according to forensic experts at The Citizen Lab.

The findings follow earlier revelations by the Guardian and other media partners in the Pegasus Project, an investigation of Israel’s NSO Group, that Rusesabagina’s daughter, a dual American-Belgian national named Carine Kanimba, was under near-constant surveillance by a client of NSO Group from January to mid-2021, when the hacking attack was discovered by researchers at Amnesty International’s security lab.

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Family of captured Ukrainian human rights activist plead for help

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Campaign launched to highlight plight of Maksym Butkevych amid fears he is being singled out over ties to UK

Family and friends of a prominent Ukrainian human rights activist who signed up to fight Russia and was captured have launched a public campaign to highlight his plight over fears he is being wrongly accused of being a “British spy” due to his ties to the UK.

Maksym Butkevych, 45, a former BBC Ukrainian service producer who studied at Sussex University and who sits on the board of Amnesty International’s Ukraine section, is well known as a human rights defender due to his work with refugees in Ukraine.

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Tool to assess jailed terrorists before release criticised as unreliable and prejudicial to Muslims

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Offenders may be kept in prison after serving sentence, but wrongly made order ‘almost always amounts to arbitrary detention', rights group argues

A tool used by authorities to assess the risk posed by convicted terrorists before their release from prison is unreliable and should be investigated, the Australian Human Rights Commission and a peak body for Muslims have argued.

The Violent Extremism Risk Assessment 2 Revised, known as VERA-2R, is used to measure the threat posed by extremists, often when considering whether they will be subject to strict court orders once their prison sentence is completed.

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‘I could have been a Mo Farah’: trafficked boxer denied his shot at Olympic glory by Home Office

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Kelvin Bilal Fawaz reveals how Farah’s TV interview was a reminder of how his own boxing career was lost to life in immigration limbo

A prodigious talent with the drive and ambition to make it all the way to the top, when Kelvin Bilal Fawaz got the chance to represent Team GB as a boxer at the 2012 Olympics in London it was a dream come true.

Trafficked as a child from Nigeria to the UK and forced into domestic servitude, Fawaz had the opportunity for Olympic glory in the place he now called home.

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Suella Braverman out of Tory leadership race as Rishi Sunak leads with 101 votes – live

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Latest updates: 1922 committee announce latest vote tally

Q: Lord Frost says Penny Mordaunt is not up to the job. You have worked with her. Do you agree with him?

Truss says she will not be making any disparaging comments about her opponents. The contest shows a broad range of talent. And the party did not get there through identity politics.

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Sudan woman faces death by stoning for adultery in first case for a decade

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Campaigners say sentence amounts to torture amid fears that country’s new regime is rolling back women’s rights

A woman in Sudan has been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, the first known case in the country for almost a decade.

Maryam Alsyed Tiyrab, 20, was arrested by police in Sudan’s White Nile state last month.

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‘Racism: It Stops with Me’ campaign funded by disaffected former Collingwood football club sponsor

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Insurance firm redirected funding from club to Australian Human Rights Commission campaign after racism claims

A new campaign to tackle racism launched by the Australian Human Rights Commission was partly paid for by a sponsor who redirected funding from the AFL’s Collingwood football club after a report commissioned by the club found a culture of “structural racism”.

The AHRC said it hopes to tackle racism by appealing to those who have not experienced it.

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Turkey should face international court over Yazidi genocide, report says

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Exclusive: Investigation by group of prominent human rights lawyers also criticises Syria and Iraq

Turkey should face charges in front of the international court of justice for being complicit in acts of genocide against the Yazidi people, while Syria and Iraq failed in their duty to prevent the killings, an investigation endorsed by British human rights lawyer Helena Kennedy has said.

The groundbreaking report, compiled by a group of prominent human rights lawyers, is seeking to highlight the binding responsibility states have to prevent genocide on their territories, even if they are carried out by a third party such as Islamic State (IS).

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Family of activist jailed in Egypt urge Liz Truss to pressure counterpart

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Family of Alaa Abd El Fattah join wife of Karim Ennarah, under travel ban, in demanding more action from foreign secretary

The family of a British national jailed in Egypt and the British wife of an Egyptian rights defender under a travel ban are demanding that Liz Truss do more to pressure her Egyptian counterpart when they meet this week.

The foreign secretary is expected to meet Egypt’s foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, in London after telling parliament in June that she would seek a meeting with him and raise the case of detained British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah. “We’re working very hard to secure his release,” she said.

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UK Home Office plans second flight to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda

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Flight could take off within weeks and before court has ruled on whether scheme is lawful

The Home Office is planning a second flight to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, which could take off before the courts have ruled on whether the scheme is lawful, the Guardian has learned.

It is understood that a second flight could take off in a matter of weeks despite the fact that the full high court hearing to examine the government’s Rwanda plans does not begin until 19 July.

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Palestinian Authority routinely tortures detainees, says rights group

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Human Rights Watch calls for donors to cut off funding to security forces and urges international court to investigate

Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip systematically torture critics in detention, a practice that could amount to crimes against humanity, an international rights group has said.

In its report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) called for donor countries to cut off funding to Palestinian security forces that commit such crimes and urged the international criminal court to investigate.

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Anthony Albanese raises case of jailed Australian engineer Robert Pether with Iraqi PM

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Exclusive: Pether, who has been imprisoned for 14 months in Baghdad, has become ‘gravely ill’ according to his family

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has raised the case of jailed engineer Robert Pether with the Iraqi leader, Mustafa al-Kadhimi, as the Australian’s family warns he has become “gravely ill” and is rapidly deteriorating in his Baghdadi jail cell.

Pether has now been imprisoned for more than 14 months following a commercial dispute between his engineering firm and Iraq’s central bank, which had hired Pether’s company to help build its new Baghdad headquarters. Pether’s family say he is innocent and the trial was unfair and compromised.

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Ferdinand Marcos Jr praises dictator father during swearing in as Philippines president

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Son says family has legacy of achievement as he completes clan’s return to power 36 years after father’s ousting

Ferdinand Marcos Jr has promised a government that will deliver for all Filipinos during his inauguration speech, even as he paid tribute to the legacy of his dictator father, whose rule was marked by widespread corruption and rights abuses.

Marcos Jr, who began his term as president of the Philippines on Thursday, said he would emulate his father. “I once knew a man who saw what little had been achieved since independence in a land of people with the greatest potential for achievement. And yet they were poor. But he got it done. Sometimes with the needed support, sometimes without. So will it be with his son. You will get no excuses from me,” he said.

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Human rights fears affecting China’s standing globally, Pew survey finds

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Negative views of China at highest level in years in many of the 19 countries that took part in survey

Concerns about China’s policies on human rights have led to negative views towards the world’s most populous nation, a Pew public opinion survey has found.

Negative views of China remain at or near historic highs in many of the 19 countries polled in this year’s survey, which spoke to people in North America, Europe, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region. The findings are largely consistent with Pew’s previous study in 2020, but with some countries now reporting even more unfavourable views of China.

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War on drugs prolonged Colombia’s decades-long civil war, landmark report finds

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Truth commission’s report, touted as a chance to heal after half a century of bloodshed, called for a ‘substantial change in drug policy’

The punitive, prohibitionist war on drugs helped prolong Colombia’s disastrous civil war, the country’s truth commission has found, in a landmark report published on Tuesday as part of an effort to heal the raw wounds left by conflict.

The report, titled “There is a future if there is truth” was the first instalment of a study put together by the commission that was formed as part of a historic 2016 peace deal with the leftist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc).

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‘The Punisher’: Rodrigo Duterte’s violent reign as Philippines president to end

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Analysis: Duterte’s popularity remains undented among people in poorer areas despite attacks on human rights, rule of law and media

Six years ago, the tough-talking mayor of Davao City, known as “the Punisher” because of his merciless approach to crime, was on the brink of taking national power in the Philippines. He promised to move power away from Manila elites, tackle poverty, corruption, and drugs. “When I become president,” Rodrigo Duterte told one rally, “I will order the police to find those people [involved in drugs] and kill them. The funeral parlours will be packed.”

The latter prediction was, at least, correct. When Duterte steps down on 30 June, having reached the end of his term limit, he will leave behind a country in which human rights, the media and rule of law have been weakened, say analysts.

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Boris Johnson and Prince Charles to hold Rwanda talks

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Pair are visiting for Commonwealth meeting, after Charles criticised government’s asylum policy

Boris Johnson will have a potentially awkward meeting with the Prince of Wales in Rwanda after the heir to the throne criticised the government’s policy of sending asylum seekers to the east African state.

The talks will take place at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm) in Kigali this week. Prince Charles reportedly described the government’s plan to fly people 4,000 miles on a one-way ticket as “appalling”.

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