As a doctor, I believe turning away from desperately ill kids – be they in Palestine or elsewhere – is a far greater crime
I have never walked away from a fight involving the wellbeing of children. I have never abandoned the right for Palestinian health workers to train in Israel for the benefit of those same children.
Why is this something I need to speak about publicly now?
Continue reading...Beijing must not be let off hook over human rights abuses in return for climate cooperation, say legislators
Legislators from around the world have gathered on the fringes of the G20 summit in Rome to protest against the presence of the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, and urge leaders not to let China off the hook over human rights abuses in return for Beijing’s cooperation on the climate crisis.
Many of those at the Rome counter-meeting have been banned from travelling to China as punishment for campaigning against Chinese repression in Xinjiang.
Continue reading...I founded al-Haq in 1979. Israeli now considers it to be a terrorist group, along with other vital humans rights organisations
I was one of the founders of the human rights organisation Al-Haq in 1979 and remain proud of its work over the past four decades in defending human rights in the Israeli occupied territories. I was horrified when it was declared to be a terrorist organisation by the Israeli defence minister on 19 October, along with five other Palestinian NGOs.
During the many years of direct Israeli occupation, from 1967 to 1995, there was a long and expanding list of proscribed groups issued by the Israeli military commander under “emergency” regulations first put in place by the British in 1945. Al-Haq was never on this list.
Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian writer and lawyer. His most recent book, Going Home: A Walk Through Fifty Years of Occupation, won the 2020 Moore prize
Continue reading...The Taliban has whitewashed Kabul’s political murals – and those who created them have fled into exile
Negina Azimi felt shock and fear like never before when she heard that Taliban fighters had entered Kabul on 15 August. As an outspoken female artist in Afghanistan, she knew they would come for her.
“We heard reports that the Taliban might raid houses. I was scared because I live in a very central neighbourhood and every room in my house is adorned with the kind of art the Taliban won’t approve of,” she says, referring to paintings that feature messages about women’s empowerment and are critical of the Taliban’s atrocities.
Negina Azimi, who is now in a refugee camp in Albania with others of the ArtLords collective. They are now planning an exhibition
Continue reading...Human Rights Watch has logged illegal seizures of land and homes then given to Taliban supporters
Thousands of people have been forced from their homes and land by Taliban officials in the north and south of Afghanistan, in what amounted to collective punishment, illegal under international law, Human Rights Watch has warned.
Many of the evictions targeted members of the Shia Hazara community, while others were of people connected to the former Afghan government. Land and homes seized this way have often been redistributed to Taliban supporters, HRW said.
Continue reading...Defence ministry says the six groups have undercover links to militant PFLP movement
Israel has accused six prominent Palestinian human rights groups of being terrorist organisations, saying they have undercover links to a militant movement.
Most of the groups document alleged human rights violations by Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
Continue reading...Government pocketed half of donations in 2020 as central bank forced UN agencies to use lower exchange rate
The Syrian government is siphoning off millions of dollars of foreign aid by forcing UN agencies to use a lower exchange rate, according to new research.
The Central Bank of Syria, which is sanctioned by the UK, US and EU, in effect made $60m (£44m) in 2020 by pocketing $0.51 of every aid dollar sent to Syria, making UN contracts one of the biggest money-making avenues for President Bashar al-Assad and his government, researchers from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Operations & Policy Center thinktank and the Center for Operational Analysis and Research found.
Continue reading...Revealed: documents released after six years of legal tussles uncover over 160 cases of misconduct and abuse
Shocking instances of sexual and physical abuse of asylum seekers at the southern US border by federal officers have been uncovered by Human Rights Watch, after a years-long battle to wrestle the information from the Department of Homeland Security under freedom of information laws.
A stash of redacted documents released to the human rights group after six years of legal tussles uncover more than 160 cases of misconduct and abuse by leading government agencies, notably Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and US Border Patrol. The papers record events between 2016 and 2021 that range from child sexual assault to enforced hunger, threats of rape and brutal detention conditions.
Continue reading...Deadly side-effect of heat stress is threat to rising numbers of workers in hot climates, doctors warn
Chronic kidney disease linked to heat stress could become a major health epidemic for millions of workers around the world as global temperatures increase over the coming decades, doctors have warned.
More research into the links between heat and CKDu – chronic kidney disease of uncertain cause – is urgently needed to assess the potential scale of the problem, they have said.
Continue reading...Gascón, who frequently clashed with Rodrigo Duterte over his ‘war on drugs’, has been hailed as a ‘true hero’ of democracy
José Luis Martín C Gascón used a walking stick to carry out his duties as the Philippines’ “courageous” human rights lawyer, a result of living with with diabetes and the wound it left on his right foot.
But in the words of his brother, Miguel Gascón, who confirmed his death on Facebook earlier this month, “of all the battles you fought, we had to lose you to Covid-19”.
Continue reading...Key figures in Saudi Arabia and UAE accused of crimes against humanity include investors in Britain
A group of human rights lawyers will on Wednesday file a legal complaint in the UK accusing key figures in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates of being involved in war crimes relating to the war in Yemen.
They plan to submit a dossier to British police and prosecutors alleging that about 20 members of the political and military elite of the two Gulf nations are guilty of crimes against humanity, and call for their immediate arrest should they enter the UK.
Continue reading...Authorities using predictive policing and human surveillance on Muslims in Xinjiang, thinktank says
Authorities in the Chinese region of Xinjiang are using predictive policing and human surveillance to gather “micro clues” about Uyghurs and empower neighbourhood informants to ensure compliance at every level of society, according to a report.
The research by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) thinktank detailed Xinjiang authorities’ expansive use of grassroots committees, integrated with China’s extensive surveillance technology, to police their Uyghur neighbours’ movements – and emotions.
Continue reading...Once used in the hunt for fugitive criminals, the global police agency’s most-wanted ‘red notice’ list now includes political refugees and dissidents
Flicking through the news one day in early 2015, Alexey Kharis, a California-based businessman and father of two, came across a startling announcement: Russia would request a global call for his arrest through the International Criminal Police Organization, known as Interpol.
“Oh, wow,” Kharis thought, shocked. All the 46-year-old knew about Interpol and its pursuit of the world’s most-wanted criminals was from novels and films. He tried to reassure himself that things would be OK and it was just an intimidatory tactic of the Russian authorities. Surely, he reasoned, the world’s largest police organisation had no reason to launch a hunt for him.
Continue reading...A decades-long policy of criminalising asylum seekers is filling prisons with innocent men, according to analysis by rights groups
Italian police have arrested more than 2,500 migrants for smuggling or aiding illegal immigration since 2013, often using anti-mafia laws to bring charges, according to the first comprehensive analysis of official data on the criminalisation of refugees and asylum seekers in Italy.
The report by three migrant rights groups has collected police data and analysed more than 1,000 criminal cases brought by prosecutors against refugees accused of driving vessels carrying asylum seekers across the Mediterranean.
Continue reading...The accused, all members of the National Security Agency, are being tried in absentia after the researcher’s kidnap and killing in Cairo
A court in Rome has begun the trial of four Egyptian security service officers accused of killing an Italian researcher, Giulio Regeni, five and a half years after his mutilated body was found in a ditch by a road in Cairo.
Italian prosecutors accuse Gen Tariq Saber, Col Aser Ibrahim, Capt Hesham Helmi, and Maj Magdi Abd al-Sharif of the “aggravated kidnapping” of Regeni, while Sharif is also charged with “conspiracy to commit aggravated murder”. Kidnap carries a potential sentence of up to eight years in Italy, while Sharif could receive a life sentence.
Continue reading...Rights watchdog accuses Britain of turning a blind eye to degrading treatment of those who lived under IS
Britain is colluding in torture and degrading treatment by refusing to repatriate women and children held in indefinite detention in Syrian prison camps, according to a report from a human rights watchdog.
The assessment by Rights and Security International (RSI) accuses the UK and others of turning a blind eye to lawless and squalid conditions in two camps that contain 60,000 women and children, many held since the collapse of Islamic State.
Continue reading...In 1940, thousands of the dictator’s opponents were summarily shot and thrown into mass graves. Now these are being opened
Trowel-heap by trowel-heap, brushstroke by brushstroke, a skull rises from a pillow of ochre earth. Its empty eye sockets stare up at the October sky and its jaw gapes, as if still screaming, gasping for air or remembering what happened on the other side of this bullet-bitten cemetery wall a year after the Spanish civil war had ended.
Between 16 March and 3 May 1940, 26 Republican soldiers, workers, communists and trade unionists were summarily tried and shot dead in the central Spanish city of Guadalajara.
Continue reading...A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Kenya to France
Continue reading...Filipina and Russian given 2021 award as organisers warn of threat to independent media worldwide
Campaigning journalists from the Philippines and Russia have won the 2021 Nobel peace prize as the Norwegian committee recognised the vital importance of an independent media to democracy and warned it was increasingly under assault.
Maria Ressa, the chief executive and cofounder of Rappler, and Dmitry Muratov, the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, were named as this year’s laureates by Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee.
Continue reading...Defeat for western states as Bahrain, Russia and other nations push through vote to shut down investigations
Bahrain, Russia and other members of the UN human rights council have pushed through a vote to shut down the body’s war crimes investigations in Yemen, in a stinging defeat for western states who sought to keep the mission going.
Members narrowly voted to reject a resolution led by the Netherlands to give the independent investigators another two years to monitor atrocities in Yemen’s conflict.
Continue reading...