Category Archives: Human rights

Calls for release of man arrested photographing transfer of Rohingyas

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Bangladesh authorities under pressure from rights activists including Bianca Jagger over detention of Abul Karam

Bangladesh authorities are facing calls to release a Rohingya man arrested while photographing the transfer of refugees to a controversial island camp this week.

Abul Kalam, 35, has been held since Monday morning when he was reportedly beaten before being taken to police barracks near the Kutupalong refugee camp, where he has lived since leaving Myanmar as a child refugee in the early 1990s.

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Saudi rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul sentenced to almost six years in jail

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Court suspends some of sentence and backdates start of term, meaning she only has three months left to serve

Loujain al-Hathloul, the Saudi women’s rights activist detained three years ago by the Saudi government, has been sentenced to five years and eight months in jail after being found guilty of spying with foreign parties and conspiring against the kingdom.

But the court suspended two years and 10 months of her sentence, and backdated the start of her jail term to May 2018, meaning she only has three months left to serve.

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UN expert urges Thailand to stop targeting protesters with royal insult law

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Students among those who could face long sentences under sweeping lese-majesty law

Thailand’s authorities must stop targeting pro-democracy protesters with draconian legal action and instead enter into dialogue, according to the UN’s special rapporteur for freedom of assembly, who warned the country risks sliding into violence.

Clément Voule said he had written to the Thai government to express alarm at the use of the fierce lese-majesty law against dozens of protesters, including students as young as 16.

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Uganda charges leading lawyer for LGBT rights with money laundering

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Human rights organisation says allegations that Nicholas Opiyo withdrew over $300,000 in funds are ‘frivolous’ and ‘fabricated’

Nicholas Opiyo, one of Uganda’s most prominent human rights lawyers, has been charged with money laundering.

Opiyo, known for representing LGBTQ+ people, appeared before magistrates in Kampala on Thursday and was remanded in custody until 28 December.

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‘Shoved aside’: Fiji set to lose top job on UN rights body in global power struggle

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Country’s expected ascension to human rights council presidency is being challenged by a China-backed bid by Bahrain

For a small country in the South Pacific that joined the UN’s powerful human rights council for the first time in 2019, Fiji has made giant strides within the organisation: right to the very top ... almost.

By consensus, Fiji’s chief diplomat in Geneva, ambassador Nazhat Shameem Khan, was set to assume the presidency of the council for 2021, a historic first not only for Fiji, but for a Pacific region consistently under-represented on the global stage.

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Karima Baloch, Pakistani human rights activist, found dead in Canada

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Husband says foul play cannot be ruled out after body of 37-year-old dissident discovered in Toronto

A dissident Pakistani human rights activist living in exile in Canada has been found dead in Toronto after going missing.

Karima Baloch, 37, was granted asylum in Canada in 2016 after her work as a human rights activist in the troubled Pakistan state of Balochistan had led to her being followed and threatened by the authorities.

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Brazilian woman forced into domestic slavery and marriage freed after 40 years

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Professor and family face up to eight years in prison for their treatment of woman given to them as a child

A Brazilian woman enslaved as a maid from the age of eight for almost four decades and forced into marriage has been rescued in a rare crackdown on domestic slavery.

The 46-year-old was found living in a small room in an apartment in Patos de Minas, in the south eastern state of Minas Gerais. She had worked for the family for most of her life without pay or any time off, according to labour inspectors.

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US death row prisoner Dustin Higgs petitions Trump for clemency

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In a last-ditch effort to stay alive, Dustin Higgs, a federal death row prisoner set to be put to death next month as part of the Trump administration’s flurry of executions in its final days in office, has petitioned the president for clemency.

Related: Trump administration has executed more Americans than all states combined, report finds

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‘Zak’s an icon’: the long fight for justice over death of Greek LGBT activist

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Zak Kostopoulos’s family say murder charges must be brought in a case that has exposed deep homophobia

Days after his death in the heart of Athens, the image of Zak Kostopoulos began to appear across the city centre, on buildings and nondescript office blocks, the marble steps of neoclassical mansions, walls and columns.

On Gladstonos street there were also words, some sprayed, some stencilled, some handwritten, but all amounting to the same thing: a memorial to a man who dared to be different.

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British banks under pressure over £45m loans to firm with links to Myanmar military

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Campaigners say the deals revealed in new report are a breach of firms’ human rights responsibilities

Human rights groups are demanding that two of Britain’s biggest banks explain why they have lent tens of millions of pounds to a technology company building a telecoms network that is part-owned and used by the Myanmar military.

HSBC and Standard Chartered have loaned $60m (£44.5m) to Vietnamese telecom giant Viettel in the last four years, a period when the Myanmar military has been accused of committing war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Viettel is a major investor in Mytel, a Myanmar mobile network that, since its launch in June 2018, has grown to become the second-biggest operator in the country with over 10 million users.

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Day off denied: how Covid confined Hong Kong’s domestic ‘helpers’

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Many migrant women have been cooped up in employers’ homes for months, unable to take time off or travel to families

On Sundays Hong Kong’s migrant domestic workers traditionally gather in their thousands in the city’s public spaces to enjoy their day off.

Congregating in shopping malls and parks or at bus stations, they take mats to sit on and crowd around rice cookers, sharing meals. “Mini villages pop up everywhere,” says Karen Grépin, associate professor at the University of Hong Kong.

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They risked all to cross the Red Sea. Now a cruel fate awaits in Yemen

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Fleeing Ethiopia and Somalia, refugees made their way across the world’s busiest migration route, only to be left in the hands of smugglers in a lawless land

Saudi Arabia was Tigrit’s dream: a place where she could find work as a cleaner or maid, and send money back to her husband and young daughter in Ethiopia. Now, like hundreds of thousands of East Africans who have left home and travelled across the Red Sea in search of a better life, she finds herself stranded in Yemen instead.

“We’re stuck. I don’t have food or money for phone credit to call home. I don’t have anything,” she said, sitting on the floor in a building site with no electricity or running water on the edge of the desert.

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‘Alarming’: female prison population rises by 100,000 in past decade – report

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New data finds number of women behind bars growing, despite most being convicted of low-level nonviolent crimes

The number of women being jailed globally has increased by more than 100,000 in the past decade, despite international rules aimed at reducing the female prison population.

New data released by Penal Reform International around the 10th anniversary of the “Bangkok Rules” adopted by the UN show there are now 741,000 women and girls in prison.

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Covid used as pretext to curtail civil rights around the world, finds report

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Free speech, LBGT+ rights and freedoms to peacefully assemble have deteriorated during the pandemic

The state of civil liberties around the world is bleak, according to a new study which found that 87% of the global population were living in nations deemed “closed”, “repressed” or “obstructed”.

The figure is a 4% increase on last year’s, as civil rights were found to have deteriorated in almost every country in the world during Covid-19. A number of governments have used the pandemic as an excuse to curtail rights such as free speech, peaceful assembly and freedom of association, according to Civicus Monitor, an alliance of civil society groups which assessed 196 countries.

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‘Being young’ leads to detention in China’s Xinjiang region

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Chinese authorities using a data-driven ‘predictive policing’ network to intern people from Muslim minorities

A rare leak of a prisoner list from a Chinese internment camp shows how a government data programme targets Muslim minorities for detention over transgressions that include simply being young, or speaking to a sibling living abroad.

The database obtained by Human Rights Watch (HRW) sheds new light on how authorities in Xinjiang region use a vast “predictive policing” network, that tracks individuals’ personal networks, their online activity and daily life.

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World Athletics accused over ‘abusive sex testing’ of athletes from global south

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Human Rights Watch says testing regulations are demeaning and target women based on racial stereotypes

World Athletics, the sport’s global governing body, targets women from countries in the global south for “abusive sex testing” based on arbitrary definitions of femininity and racial stereotypes, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

A report by the rights group, published on Friday, claims female runners are being pushed out of competitive events, which some rely on for their livelihoods. Athletes struggle with emotional trauma and feel discriminated against and humiliated by the testing, said HRW.

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France security law incompatible with human rights, say UN experts

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Special reporters take government to task over proposed legislation that would give police more power

UN experts have urged France to completely revise a proposed new security law, deeming it “incompatible” with international law and human rights.

Five independent UN special reporters took the French government to task over the proposed legislation and said tinkering with it by rewriting certain clauses was not enough.

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Part 3: How do you say goodbye forever?

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In part three of the Temporary podcast we meet Elaheh, who had to suddenly flee Iran, not realising she might never see her family again. Now a recognised refugee in Australia with a young son, her visa’s restrictions dictate whether her son will ever meet the strong women who raised her

Temporary is a project from the University of New South Wales Centre for Ideas and Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law in partnership with Guardian Australia, inspired by the book Refugee Rights and Policy Wrongs by Jane McAdam and Fiona Chong. Series artwork by Matt Huynh.

You can find additional information, photography and artwork at the Kaldor Centre’s Temporary website.

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Swedish-Iranian scientist faces ‘imminent risk of execution’ in Iran

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Ahmadreza Djalali had been sentenced to death on espionage charges

A Swedish-Iranian scientist sentenced to death in Iran on espionage charges may face execution as early as Wednesday, human rights groups and his wife have warned.

Ahmadreza Djalali was due to be taken from Evin prison to Rajai Shahr prison on Tuesday, a normal preliminary to an execution. Death sentences in Iran are often carried out on Wednesdays.

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BBC’s A Suitable Boy rankles ‘love jihad’ conspiracy theorists in India

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BJP reaction to depiction of Hindu-Muslim romance follows recent rows over interfaith marriages

When the BBC’s adaptation of Vikram’s Seth’s novel A Suitable Boy recently landed on Indian Netflix it did not take long for the fanfare to turn to controversy.

The series, it was claimed by politicians from the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), had “hurt religious sentiments” of Hindus by depicting the lead character, a Hindu girl called Lata, passionately kissing a Muslim boy against the backdrop of a temple.

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