Category Archives: Human rights

Australian Human Rights Commission to slash staff after budget cuts and surge in workload

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Agency says one in three jobs will be lost and warns current funding is insufficient for it to perform its statutory function

One in three jobs will be slashed at the Australian Human Rights Commission as a record number of complaints and low base funding take their toll.

The human rights agency has issued a blunt warning that its current funding “does not provide us with the resources required to perform our statutory functions”.

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Johnson compares Putin to drug dealer ahead of Saudi Arabia trip

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British PM hopes to persuade Gulf state to raise oil and gas production to reduce reliance on Moscow

Boris Johnson has compared Vladimir Putin to a drug dealer who managed to hook western nations on Russian supplies of oil and gas, ahead of a trip to the Middle East in an attempt to diversify the sources of Britain’s energy imports.

The UK prime minister urged European countries to “get ourselves off that addiction” and said he wanted support from “the widest possible coalition” to help offset the pressures caused by spiralling oil and gas prices.

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Saudi Arabia executes 81 men in one day

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Officials say those executed were convicted of charges including terrorism and holding ‘deviant beliefs’

Saudi Arabia has executed 81 men over the past 24 hours, including seven Yemenis and one Syrian national, on charges including terrorism and holding “deviant beliefs“, state news agency SPA said on Saturday.

The number dwarfed the 67 executions reported in the kingdom in all of 2021 and the 27 in 2020.

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Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, imprisoned for ‘insulting Islam’, freed after 10 years

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It’s unclear if Saudi authorities placed restriction on his release but human rights campaigners promise to fight them

Saudi blogger Raif Badawi has been released from prison in Saudi Arabia after serving a 10-year sentence for advocating an end to religious influence on public life, his wife said on Friday.

“Raif called me. He is free,” his wife, Ensaf Haidar, who lives in Canada with their three children and had been advocating for his release, told AFP.

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UN human rights chief to visit China, including Xinjiang, in May

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Michelle Bachelet’s announcement comes as 192 groups call for release of long-postponed report into region

The UN rights chief has announced that she will make a long-delayed visit to China in May, including to Xinjiang, where activists and western lawmakers say Beijing is subjecting Uyghur people to genocide.

“I am pleased to announce that we have recently reached an agreement with the government of China for a visit,” Michelle Bachelet told the UN human rights council on Tuesday.

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Tens of thousands join rallies around the world in support of Ukraine

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Demonstrators gathered in cities across Europe, the US and South America to demand an end to Russia’s invasion

Tens of thousands of people demonstrated in cities including Santiago, Vancouver Paris and New York in support of Ukraine, demanding an end to Russia’s invasion.

The protesters rallied on Saturday against Russian president Vladimir Putin’s attack, which began on 24 February and appeared to be entering a new phase with escalating bombardment.

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‘For our grandchildren’: the man recording the lives of Paraguay’s vanishing forest people

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Mateo Sobode Chiqueno’s lifelong project compiling cassettes of the Ayoreo people’s stories, songs and struggles to survive is now the subject of an award-winning film, Nothing but the Sun

In a tattered cardboard box in Mateo Sobode Chiqueno’s home, hundreds of plastic cassette cases contain four decades of memories. “Here in my house, I have more than 1,000 cassettes of Ayoreo histories and songs,” says Chiqueno, who keeps them alongside his tape recorder at his wooden shack in Campo Loro, Paraguay. Many of the voices belong to people who are dead.

Chiqueno began compiling his interviews with the Ayoreo, hunter-gatherers of the Chaco Forest, in 1979, after seeing missionaries using tape recorders to document their experiences. His tapes partially preserve a fast-disappearing culture.

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Interpol arrest warrant allegedly targeting Kuwaiti princess and partner ‘on political grounds’

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Dissident couple say their lives would be under threat if returned from Bosnia to Kuwait, as rights groups claim notice undermines refugee law

A Kuwaiti princess seeking asylum in Bosnia-Herzegovina has claimed the Kuwaiti state is using an Interpol red notice to intimidate and harass her and force the extradition of her partner, a prominent dissident blogger, back to the country.

Sheikha Moneera Fahad al-Sabah and Mesaed al-Mesaileem, said they face torture and threats to their lives if they are returned to Kuwait due to their political activism.

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People of colour fleeing Ukraine attacked by Polish nationalists

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Non-white refugees face violence and racist abuse in Przemyśl, as police warn of fake reports of ‘migrants committing crimes’

Police in Poland have warned that fake reports of violent crimes being committed by people fleeing Ukraine are circulating on social media after Polish nationalists attacked and abused groups of African, south Asian and Middle Eastern people who had crossed the border last night.

Attackers dressed in black sought out groups of non-white refugees, mainly students who had just arrived in Poland at Przemyśl train station from cities in Ukraine after the Russian invasion. According to the police, three Indians were beaten up by a group of five men, leaving one of them hospitalised.

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Egyptians seen in jail ‘torture’ videos charged with spreading fake news

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Public prosecutors’ claim that detainees inflicted injuries on themselves with a coin is ‘laughable’, says Human Rights Watch

Detainees seen in videos allegedly showing torture in a Cairo police station inflicted their injuries on themselves, according to Egyptian authorities, who have charged the prisoners with spreading “fake news”.

Up to 13 people detained in El-Salam First police station for unknown petty crimes made multiple videos that they say show the abuse they suffered at the hands of police officers and security forces.

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More rights defenders murdered in 2021, with 138 activists killed just in Colombia

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Most of 358 victims worked on land, environmental and indigenous rights, with more killed in Mexico, India and among Afghan women


A Colombian conservationist who saved a rare species of parrot from extinction, a young feminist activist in Afghanistan, and two poets in Myanmar who used words to protest against the military coup were among 358 human rights defenders murdered in 35 countries last year, analysis has found.

The environmentalist Gonzalo Cardona Molina, 55; Frozan Safi, a 29-year-old Afghan economics lecturer; and K Za Win and Khet Thi, two of several poets to be killed, were among those targeted because of their “peaceful and powerful” work, according to a global analysis of threats and attacks faced by human rights activists compiled by Front Line Defenders (FLD) and the Human Rights Defenders Memorial.

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Lawsuit aims to stop Texas investigating parents seeking care for trans children

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Lawsuit filed after state’s governor and attorney general called medically necessary gender-affirming care ‘child abuse’

America’s largest civil rights non-profit has filed a lawsuit asking a Texas state court to block officials from investigating parents who seek medically necessary gender-affirming care for their children.

The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), ACLU of Texas and Lambda Legal, named the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, as a defendant, along with the Texas department of family and protective services (DFPS) and its commissioner, Jaime Masters.

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Tycoon’s son sentenced to death in Pakistan in high-profile rape and murder case

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Zahir Jaffer tortured and beheaded Noor Mukadam, in July last year, in case that sparked outrage over violence against women

A court in Islamabad has sentenced to death the tycoon’s son who raped and murdered Noor Mukadam, a case that sparked outrage in Pakistan.

Mukadam, 27, the daughter of a former Pakistani diplomat, was held captive, tortured and beheaded in July last year by Zahir Jaffer, a member of a well-known industrialist family.

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Kabul to California: how the ‘hip-hop family’ mobilised for young Afghans

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With breakdancers, artists and parkourists facing a bleak future under the Taliban, a global network stepped in to help, drawing on the activist spirit of rap culture

A veteran of the hip-hop scene and internationally celebrated breakdancer, Nancy Yu – AKA Asia One – has her fair share of people contacting her looking for advice. But the message she received in 2019 from a young Afghan was a little different.

Frustrated by his breakdancing crew’s inability to get visas to perform internationally, Moshtagh* was wondering if Asia could help. “He felt they were really good, but they felt, like, invisible to the world,” she says. “I liked him. He wasn’t trying to bug me or say ‘we need this right now’ … He seemed rather humble and honest.”

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Kurdish transgender woman shot by brother had been hiding from family

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Friends of Doski Azad said the 23-year-old makeup artist had received repeated death threats from male family members

The Kurdish transgender woman Doski Azad shot dead by her brother last month, had been living in hiding from her family after repeated death threats, friends have said.

According to friends, Azad had had to move home regularly after several death threats by male members of her family.

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Greta stands with Sami and Navalny on trial again: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Mexico

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‘Insightful and courageous’: Gabon activist Hervé Mombo Kinga dies of Covid

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Celebrated blogger had suffered ill health after spending 17 months in prison for speaking out against president Ali Bongo

Hervé Mombo Kinga, the pro-democracy activist and celebrated blogger who spent 17 months in jail for insulting the Gabonese president, Ali Bongo Ondimba, was not impressed when he saw the pictures of the leader limping up the stairs of France’s presidential palace.

Kinga, who died last week at 47 after contracting Covid, was infuriated by the episode – widely shared in the west African country of Gabon, despite the embarrassment it caused the president, whose family has held power for more than five decades.

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Vietnamese activists routinely placed under house arrest, report finds

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Authorities regularly detain environmentalists, rights campaigners and dissidents to prevent them travelling or attending events, says Human Rights Watch

The Vietnamese government is routinely placing activists under arbitrary house arrest, employing tactics including stationing guards outside their homes, setting up roadblocks nearby and using superglue and padlocks to jam their doors shut, according to a report.

The study by Human Rights Watch (HRW) documented cases involving 170 rights activists, bloggers, dissidents and their family members who were prevented from domestic and international travel between 2004 and 2021. The real number of those affected is likely to be higher, the report warned.

Those targeted had worked on various issues, from land rights and environmental activism, to advocating for media freedom and the rights of political prisoners, to participating in anti-China protests.

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Tragic consequences of repatriating asylum seekers | Letter

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Officials often underestimate the dangers faced by failed asylum seekers who are forcibly sent home, writes Jackie Fearnley

The recent Human Rights Watch report on the harm done to Cameroonian asylum seekers, both while they were trying to make their claims in the US and when repatriated in a blaze of publicity, should be required reading for all asylum decision-makers (African migrants deported in Trump era suffered abuse on return, 10 February).

From my experience of helping Cameroonian torture survivors over the past 14 years, I have noted that Home Office decision-makers, and many judges, can fatally underestimate the degree of risk attached to the forcible return process, particularly as failed asylum seekers are viewed as having brought the country into disrepute and can be punished with imprisonment.

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‘Illegal’ extradition of Bahraini dissident from Serbia calls Interpol’s role into question

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Abuse of the policing body’s ‘red notice’ system is blamed as an activist is forced to return to life in prison in the Gulf state

Marko Štambuk arrived at Belgrade district prison on a Monday morning in late January, only to be told his client was no longer inside. “Immediately I knew something had happened,” he said.

Štambuk, a lawyer, had spent the previous Friday frantically obtaining an injunction from the European court of human rights (ECHR) demanding Serbian authorities halt the extradition of his client, Ahmed Jaafar Mohamed Ali, a Bahraini dissident. This banned the Serbian authorities from extraditing Ali until late February, and warned them that doing so would constitute a rare breach of the European convention on human rights.

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