Category Archives: Human rights

South Korea’s highest court overturns military convictions of two gay soldiers

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Court rules long-criticised military sodomy law shouldn’t apply to consensual sex off base in off-duty hours

South Korea’s supreme court has thrown out a military court ruling that convicted two gay soldiers for having sex outside their military facilities, saying it stretched the reading of the country’s widely criticised military sodomy law.

The court’s decision on Thursday to send the case back to the high court for armed forces was welcomed by human rights advocates, who had long protested the country’s 1962 military criminal act’s article 92-6, which prohibits same-sex conduct among soldiers in the country’s predominantly male military.

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Replacing Human Rights Act will weaken protections, say peers and MPs

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Joint committee on human rights says plans contravene principle that human rights are universal

Dominic Raab’s proposal to replace the Human Rights Act with a British bill of rights is not evidence-based and will diminish protections for individuals, MPs and peers have said.

The criticisms by the joint committee on human rights (JCHR) are the latest directed at the planned changes, which the justice secretary has said will counter “wokery and political correctness” and expedite the deportation of foreign criminals.

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Colston Four acquittal to be referred to court of appeal

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Unusual move to seek legal clarification, which cannot reverse verdict, amounts to the ‘politicisation of jury trials’, says defence lawyer

The attorney general has referred the case of four protesters cleared of the toppling of the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston to the court of appeal for legal direction.

In a rare move, which cannot reverse the not guilty verdicts, Suella Braverman is to ask appeal judges for clarification on whether defendants can cite their human rights as a defence in a case of criminal damage.

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Syria’s $1.5bn seizure of protesters’ property ‘akin to scare tactic’

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Human rights group accuses Assad regime of profiting from detainees forced to sign away their rights, some while blindfolded

More than $1.5bn (£1.2bn) worth of personal property including cars, olive groves, shops, houses, electronics and jewellery has been seized by the Syrian government from citizens accused of joining anti-government protests, according to a rights group.

The Association of Detainees and the Missing in Sednaya Prison (ADMSP) estimates that almost 40% of those detained after the Syrian uprising of 2011 were subject to property seizures.

It alleges the Syrian regime has attempted to circumvent international sanctions through this revenue, while ensuring that former detainees in exile have nothing to return to as the country struggles to rebuild.

“The regime did this, they took everything so that we don’t go back,” said Hassan Al Haj, remembering his family’s land in a village near Aleppo. “We used to have lands with olive and pistachio trees. I’d built a house there but never moved in. The government seized it before I was able to.”

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Liberty threatens to sue government over ‘racist’ joint enterprise law

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Human rights group argues law unfairly attaches gang motives to black and minority-ethnic young men

The human rights group Liberty is threatening to sue the government and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) over the bitterly contested law of joint enterprise, arguing that it is discredited and racist in the way the authorities pursue it.

Under the law, people present when a person is killed can be convicted of murder despite not committing any serious violence themselves, if they are found to have “encouraged or assisted” the perpetrator. Liberty is acting for the campaign group Joint Enterprise Not Guilty By Association (Jengba), which supports approximately 1,400 people in prison who believe they have been unjustly convicted of serious crimes perpetrated by somebody else.

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Tigray has been the scene of ‘ethnic cleansing’, say human rights groups

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Human Rights Watch-Amnesty report accuses Ethiopian paramilitaries of war crimes and crimes against humanity

Ethiopian paramilitaries have carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Tigray, forcing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes using threats, killings and sexual violence, according to a joint report by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

The rights groups accuse officials and paramilitaries from the neighbouring Amhara region of war crimes and crimes against humanity in western Tigray, in northern Ethiopia.

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Nigerian humanist jailed for 24 years after pleading guilty to blasphemy

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Mubarak Bala’s case seen as part of a clampdown on critics of religious orthodoxy in a deeply conservative region

A prominent Nigerian humanist has been sentenced to 24 years in prison after pleading guilty to blasphemy charges, in a landmark case that has put a new focus on the threats to freedom of expression in the west African country.

Mubarak Bala, the president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria, was sentenced on Tuesday afternoon, two years after his arrest at his home in the northern Kaduna state on 28 April 2020. He was then taken to neighbouring Kano, where calls for action against him had been made by members of the religious establishment in the majority Muslim and conservative state.

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Russian mercenaries and Mali army accused of killing 300 civilians

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Human Rights Watch says deaths during anti-jihadist operation in Moura ‘the worst atrocity in Mali in a decade’

Suspected Russian mercenaries participated in an operation with Mali’s army in March in which about 300 civilian men were allegedly executed over five days, Human Rights Watch (HRW) says.

Eyewitnesses and local community leaders said hundreds of men were rounded up and killed in small groups during the anti-jihadist operation on 23 March in the central town of Moura. The rural town of about 10,000 inhabitants is in the Mopti region, a hotspot of jihadist activity that has intensified and spread to neighbouring countries in the Sahel region.

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Tourists urged to avoid Myanmar as junta prepares to reopen to world

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Travel agents and aid workers raise issues of safety and note that tourism dollars will only benefit the ruling military

Foreign tourists have been urged to avoid visiting Myanmar after the junta signalled plans to open up the country despite widespread ongoing rights abuses and violence including kidnappings and killings by the military, as well as food shortages and regular blackouts.

More than a year after it seized power and ousted Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s military has announced it plans to reopen for tourism and resume international flights on 17 April.

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Revealed: migrant workers in Qatar forced to pay billions in recruitment fees

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Guardian investigation finds labourers – including those on World Cup-related projects – were left with huge debts

Low-wage migrant workers have been forced to pay billions of dollars in recruitment fees to secure their jobs in World Cup host nation Qatar over the past decade, a Guardian investigation has found.

Bangladeshi men migrating to Qatar are likely to have paid about $1.5bn (£1.14bn) in fees, and possibly as high as $2bn, between 2011 and 2020. Nepali men are estimated to have paid around $320m, and possibly more than $400m, in the four years between mid-2015 to mid-2019.

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Britain hands billions to projects linked to labour abuse and climate damage

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UK Export Finance used £5.24bn of taxpayer money to fund overseas energy and infrastructure ventures – despite its own review raising concerns

The British government has provided more than £5bn in the past three years to overseas energy and infrastructure projects linked to labour abuses and environmental damage, according to documents and interviews with workers.

The funding – a combination of loans and guarantees – comes from the government’s export credit agency, UK Export Finance (UKEF), a government department to help UK companies access business contracts overseas.

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Federal police blame ‘oversight’ for delay in Australian review of Sri Lankan war crime allegations

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AFP not aware of ‘administrative oversight’ until letter from justice groups seeking update on 2019 complaint about Jagath Jayasuriya

Federal police blamed an “administrative oversight” for huge delays in reviewing war crime allegations against a Sri Lankan man as he travelled to and from Australia, documents show.

In 2019, human rights groups wrote to the Australian federal police warning that Jagath Jayasuriya, a retired Sri Lankan general, “has entered Australia and may still be in the jurisdiction”.

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Polish woman is first to face trial for violating strict abortion law

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Justyna Wydrzyńska, who gave a woman experiencing domestic violence miscarriage-inducing pills, could be jailed for three years

The first person to be charged in Poland for breaking the country’s strict abortion law by providing miscarriage-inducing tablets to a pregnant woman is due to face trial next week.

Justyna Wydrzyńska, from the Polish group Aborcyjny Dream Team (ADT), is charged with illegally aiding an abortion and faces up to three years in prison if she is found guilty.

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Amnesty hits out at Tory plans to replace Human Rights Act with bill of rights

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Justice secretary Dominic Raab’s proposals will ‘slash away’ at rights of ordinary people to challenge government, group says

Amnesty International has criticised plans by the justice secretary Dominic Raab to replace Labour’s Human Rights Act with a British bill of rights.

Raab has argued that the proposal will better protect the press in exposing wrongdoing and said he feared free speech was being “whittled away” by “wokery and political correctness”.

The deputy prime minister told the Daily Mail that under plans being drawn up, there would be only limited restrictions placed on the protections on free speech with checks to stop people abusing it to promote terrorism.

Laura Trevelyan, Amnesty’s human rights in the UK campaign manager, hit out at his plan on Saturday.

“Scrapping the Human Rights Act has long been the intention of Mr Raab and others not because they want to extend any protections, but because they want to slash away at the powers ordinary people have got to challenge the government and its decisions,” she said.

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Coalition urged to terminate Canstruct contract to end financial ‘black hole’ on Nauru

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There is little sense keeping refugees on island at great expense following New Zealand resettlement deal, human rights groups say

The government must end the “moral and financial black hole” on Nauru by ceasing its contract with Canstruct and returning those on Nauru to Australia in the wake of the New Zealand refugee resettlement deal, human rights groups say.

Asked on Friday whether it would end the Canstruct contract for “garrison and welfare services”, the government declined to answer.

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France opens inquiry into alleged torture by Interpol’s Emirati head

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Ahmed Nasser al-Raisi accused of being responsible for the torture of opposition figure in UAE

French anti-terror prosecutors have opened a preliminary inquiry into torture and acts of barbarism allegedly committed by Emirati general Ahmed Nasser al-Raisi, according to judicial sources.. Raisi in November became president of Interpol.

The inquiry follows a legal complaint by an NGO that accused Raisi of being responsible in his role as high-ranking official at the United Arab Emirates interior ministry for the torture of an opposition figure.

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Australian man, 83, dies in Iranian prison after being denied healthcare

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Amnesty says Australian-Iranian Shokrollah Jebeli was subjected to ‘more than two years of torture’

An Australian-Iranian man in his eighties jailed over a financial dispute has died in prison in Iran, Amnesty International said, accusing Tehran of subjecting him to torture by denying urgent medical care.

Shokrollah Jebeli,83, who had been incarcerated in Tehran’s Evin prison since January 2020, died on Sunday after being taken from prison to hospital the previous day, Amnesty said.

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US declares Myanmar army committed genocide against Rohingya

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Designation could put global pressure on military-led government, which faces accusations at international court of justice

The US has declared Myanmar’s mass killing of the Rohingya Muslim population to be a “genocide”.

The secretary of state, Antony Blinken, made the announcement at the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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Sumaya Sadurni: photojournalist and ‘rock’n’roll Mother Teresa’ dies at 32

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Described as ‘outstanding and fearless’ by Bobi Wine, tributes have been paid to Sadurni, whose work featured in the Guardian and New York Times

Sumaya Sadurni Carrasco has died while travelling to take photographs for the Guardian’s Saturday magazine in northern Uganda. Thomas Mugisha, an NGO worker, also died in the accident on 7 March.

Sumy, as she was known, was a talented, driven and courageous photojournalist with a rare gift for friendship. At just 32 years old, she had built a powerful body of work, which had been published in some of the world’s best-known publications; in 2020 she was shortlisted for the Guardian’s agency photographer of the year. She also leaves a legacy of knowledge and inspiration that she passed on to young photographers as a Uganda Press Photo award mentor, a teacher at Makerere University and a Canon trainer.

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‘Contemptuous’: anger in Brazil as Bolsonaro given Indigenous merit medal

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Government honours president who activists accuse of undermining Indigenous protections

Brazilian activists are outraged after Jair Bolsonaro – who has been accused of spearheading a cataclysmic attack on Indigenous rights – was honoured by his own government for his supposedly “altruistic” efforts to protect Indigenous lives.

Bolsonaro was granted the Medal of Indigenous Merit on Wednesday in recognition of what the justice ministry called his attempts to defend Indigenous communities in the South American country.

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