Category Archives: Human rights

Iran: deaths reported as security forces open fire on protesters in Zahedan

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Crowds in Mahabad also fired on during rally held after funeral of protester Ismail Mauludi

Iranian security forces have opened fired on protesters in Zahedan a month after a massacre that killed scores of people in the restive south-eastern city.

Crowds were also fired on in Mahabad, another city with a long history of resistance against the regime, in renewed deadly violence at the end of the sixth week of unrest sparked by the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini on 16 September.

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World Cup organisers in Qatar respond to Australian players’ criticism, saying ‘no country is perfect’

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Group running tournament praises Socceroos for raising awareness of human rights but does not address issue of same-sex relationships

Qatari organisers of the 2022 World Cup have responded to the Socceroos’ criticism of the country’s human rights record, praising the group of players for raising awareness of issues ahead of the tournament while admitting that “no country is perfect”.

Sixteen Australian players raised their concerns about the “suffering” of migrant workers and the inability of LGBTQ+ people in Qatar “to love the person that they choose” in a collective video released on Thursday.

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Peter Tatchell stopped in Qatar while staging LGBT+ rights protest

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Incident outside National Museum in Doha comes less than a month before start of men’s football World Cup

The human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has been stopped by police in Qatar while staging a protest against the Gulf state’s criminalisation of LGBTQ+ people.

Tatchell’s protest outside the National Museum of Qatar in the capital, Doha, comes less than a month before the start of the Fifa World Cup, which is expected to attract 1.2 million visitors from around the world.

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Rishi Sunak urged to scrap ‘undemocratic’ proposals to axe 2,400 laws

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Charities and trade unions among those calling on new PM to shelve bill that would scrap EU-era legislation protecting workers’ rights and the environment

Employers, trade unions, lawyers and environmentalists are calling on Rishi Sunak to scrap Jacob Rees-Mogg’s legislation that would sweep away 2,400 laws derived from the EU.

The retained EU law (revocation and reform) bill is due for its second reading in the House of Commons on Tuesday, which would scrap protections including the ban on animal testing for cosmetics, workers’ rights and environmental measures.

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Terror to elation: Ukrainian woman’s journey from Azovstal to PoW to freedom

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Exclusive: Guardian hears of ordeal in first major interview given by any of the women freed in last week’s prisoner swap

It was like something from the cold war. After five months in the most notorious jail in occupied Ukraine, Alina Panina, 25, had found herself, without explanation, at the foot of a bridge over a river in no man’s land with 107 fellow female Ukrainian prisoners of war.

Behind Panina lay Russian-occupied territory and her experiences of the siege of Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks, the subsequent surrender and then captivity in Olenivka prison in Donetsk. There she was witness to the aftermath of an explosion that killed 53 male prisoners, a blast said by Kyiv to have been engineered by Moscow to silence the victims of torture.

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China using influencers to whitewash human rights abuses, report finds

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Social media videos by people from the Uyghur community are part of a sophisticated propaganda campaign, thinktank says

The Chinese Communist party is using social media influencers from troubled regions like Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia to whitewash human rights abuses through an increasingly sophisticated propaganda campaign, a report has claimed.

The report published on Thursday by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), described the videos by “frontier influencers” as a growing part of Beijing’s “propaganda arsenal”.

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Tamil refugees on Chagos Islands fear deportation under Rwanda-type plan

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UK government lawyers tell asylum seekers they can return to Sri Lanka or be removed to undisclosed country

Tamil refugees seeking asylum from the British-claimed Chagos Islands face being forcibly removed to a third country under Rwanda-style plans drawn up by the UK government.

Government lawyers have told the asylum seekers that if they cannot be returned to Sri Lanka they will instead be removed to another undisclosed country.

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NSW’s refusal to allow UN inspectors in prisons ‘raises questions’, human rights commissioner says

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Lorraine Finlay says state government’s decision means Australia is ‘failing to live up to the promises it made to the world’

Australia’s human rights commissioner, Lorraine Finlay, has questioned why the New South Wales government was blocking officials from the United Nations inspecting its jails if it was confident about meeting minimum standards.

She said the NSW move could jeopardise promises made by Australia as part of the UN’s Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (Opcat) that was ratified by the federal government under former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull in 2017.

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‘I write what they tell me to’: Iran’s crackdown on journalists intensifies

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Independent media and human rights groups report arrests and physical assault as authorities try to suppress news of protests

As nationwide protests enter their fourth week in Iran, the government is increasing its crackdown on activists and journalists. On 22 September Niloofar Hamedi, an Iranian journalist, was arrested after posting a picture she took of the parents of Mahsa Amini hugging each other in a Tehran hospital on the day of their daughter’s death.

Amini, 22, died in police custody on 16 September after she was arrested for not wearing her hijab properly, which sparked the protests that then spread across the country.

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Red Cross frustrated by lack of access to PoWs in Russian-occupied Donetsk

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ICRC responds to criticism from Zelenskiy, saying it is being refused entry to Olenivka prison

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has gone public with its frustration at being refused entry to a notorious Russian prisoner of war camp after scathing criticism from Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

In his daily evening address, Ukraine’s president accused the ICRC of a lack of leadership, suggesting that officials were picking up their salaries without doing their jobs.

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Dissidents in China detained and harassed as Beijing prepares for party congress

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Government critics and activists intimidated by police ahead of Sunday’s Communist party meeting, where Xi Jinping is expected to gain third term

Chinese authorities have stepped up surveillance and harassment of government critics as part of a crackdown on dissent ahead of the Communist party’s upcoming 20th congress, its key political gathering.

Since mid-September, numerous activists and petitioners seeking to lobby the government have been detained or put under house arrest across China, while many human rights lawyers have been intimidated, harassed and followed by agents. They say authorities, wary that their criticisms of the government could lead to social discontent and threaten the regime, are pulling out all the stops to silence them ahead of the twice-in-decade event, set to start on Sunday.

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‘It’s a revolution’: Iranian women in UK believe protests will bring freedom

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Women who fled regime are working hard to expose abuses in Iran and say this time real change is possible

Iranian and Kurdish women living in the UK believe the prospect of freedom for millions of women in their home country has never been greater following protests after the death of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested in Tehran for not wearing her headscarf correctly.

Many of those who fled the Iranian regime because of its attacks on human and women’s rights are working hard behind the scenes to support women in their home country to expose the abuses in the hope of encouraging the international community to act to bring about regime change.

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First British woman and her child repatriated to UK from Syrian camp

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Woman, said to have been trafficked, is only adult allowed back since end of Islamic State ground war

A British woman and her child have been repatriated from a Syrian camp, the first time an adult has been allowed to come back to the UK from detention since the end of the ground war against Islamic State.

The Foreign Office said that British policy to those held in Syria remained unchanged, and that it considered requests for help on “a case by case basis”, but campaigners said it was a significant first step.

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Northern Territory moves to raise age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 12

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Government says authorities will refer children under 12 and their families to parenting and behavioural change programs to break the cycle of offending

The Northern Territory government is seeking to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 years old to 12 years old.

The Labor government introduced the legislation to parliament on Thursday, saying authorities would now refer children under the age of 12 and their families to intensive parenting and behavioural change programs to break the cycle of offending.

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Kwasi Kwarteng’s secret meetings with Saudi oil firms revealed

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Exclusive: Meetings while in Saudi Arabia undisclosed due to ‘administrative oversight’, says business department

The chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, held undisclosed meetings with senior executives of Saudi Arabian firms when he was the business secretary, documents acquired by the Guardian show.

The meetings occurred in January, when Kwarteng visited the kingdom for a two-day trip under his previous ministerial role.

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Gunshots and blasts heard at Mahsa Amini protests in Iran

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Government officials struggle to end demonstrations sparked by death in police custody of Kurdish woman

Gunshots and explosions were heard in the Iranian Kurdish city of Sanandaj on Monday as the protests over the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini continued to unfold across the country and for first time spread to Iran’s crucial oil industry.

Government officials are struggling to end the protests led by young Iranians, especially women, previously regarded as uninterested by politics.

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Tigray rebels tortured and killed civilians in renewed fighting, survivors claim

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Witnesses claim the attacks in Amhara region last month were carried out on those the TPLF suspected of supporting Ethiopian federal forces

Tigrayan rebel forces have killed dozens of civilians during their latest occupation of a town in the Amhara region, survivors claim, after fighting resumed last month in the northern area of Ethiopia.

The alleged killings took place in the town of Kobo, located along the highway to the capital, Addis Ababa. Between 13-15 September, Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) fighters shot dead unarmed civilians they suspected of supporting federal forces and local militias, survivors have told the Guardian.

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UN vote to ignore human rights abuses in China leaves west in dead end

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Result not to debate its own damning report shows many states are unwilling take sides in power struggle between China and west

In a display of raw Chinese political power, the UN has voted to turn its back on a report written by its own human rights commissioner that accused Beijing of serious human rights abuses and possible crimes against humanity in Xinjiang province.

The 47-strong UN human rights council meeting in Geneva voted on Thursday by 19 to 17 to reject an American-led call for a debate on the report at the next human rights council in spring. Eleven countries abstained. A simple majority was required.

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Spain passes law to bring ‘justice’ to Franco-era victims

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Measures include creation of census and national DNA bank to help locate and identify remains

Five decades after the death of General Franco, and three years after the Spanish dictator’s remains were finally removed from his hulking mausoleum outside Madrid, the country’s senate has approved legislation intended to bring “justice, reparation and dignity” to the victims of the civil war and subsequent dictatorship.

On Wednesday afternoon, the upper house of Spain’s parliament passed the socialist-led government’s Democratic Memory law, with 128 votes in favour, 113 against, and 18 abstentions.

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Young and sick children to be first Australians repatriated from Syrian detention camps

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About 60 wives, sons and daughters of slain or jailed IS combatants to be rescued from Roj camp, but some women face arrest upon return to Australia

The youngest, most unwell and most vulnerable of the Australian children currently held in squalid Syrian detention camps will be the first ones repatriated to Australia. But some of their mothers could face arrest – and potential charges – upon return to the country.

The Australian government is currently implementing plans to repatriate about 60 Australian women and children – wives, sons and daughters of slain or jailed Islamic State combatants – who have been held for more than three years in the dangerous detention camps in north-east Syria.

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