Arrested Lawyers Initiative says hundreds punished on trumped-up charges and hundreds more await trial
Campaigners are seeking to use the UK’s Magnitsky-style human rights sanctions against Turkish prosecutors and officials responsible for arresting and imprisoning thousands of lawyers.
Organisers of the Arrested Lawyers Initiative (ALI) are gathering evidence about the alleged torture and mistreatment of judges and legal representatives detained in Turkish jails.
Continue reading...Australia’s border policies continue to be felt in a country where almost 14,000 refugees and asylum seekers endure a ‘painful, hopeful wait’ to be resettled
From the ferry terminal in Batam, a city on Indonesia’s far north-western border, you can look across the narrow strait to Singapore. But only a short walk from the waterfront, more than 200 men are passing listless days and curfewed nights in cramped dorm rooms. Men sit in rows under the tropical sun, raising their arms in crosses above their heads and chanting, “Seven years in limbo! Enough, enough!”
They are bored, but buffed. Their DIY gym equipment offers some reprieve: old buckets filled with cement, stuck to the ends of metal poles. “They want to prepare themselves,” Shamsullah Husseini, a 21-year-old Hazara refugee, tells me when I visit. “They want to be ready for the country that accepts them.”
Continue reading...Children as young as five still exposed to hazardous work in countries including Ghana and Ivory Coast, report reveals
Nearly 20 years after the world’s major chocolate manufacturers pledged to abolish employment abuses, hazardous child labour remains rife in their supply chains, a new study finds.
Research from the University of Chicago finds that more than two-fifths (43%) of all children aged between five and 17 in cocoa-growing regions of Ghana and Ivory Coast – the world’s largest cocoa producers – are engaged in hazardous work.
In total, an estimated 1.5 million children work in cocoa production around the world, half of whom are found in these two west African nations alone. Hazardous work includes the use of sharp tools, working at night and exposure to agrochemical products, among other harmful activities.
The report, commissioned by the US Department of Labor, notes that the overall proportion of children working has gone up by 14 percentage points in the past decade. The increase is accompanied by a 62% rise in production over the same period.
The findings raise difficult questions for industry in particular. Back in 2001, big brands such as Nestlé, Mars and Hershey signed a cross-sector accord aimed at eliminating egregious child labour. Despite missing deadlines to deliver on their pledge in 2005, 2008 and 2010, they continue to insist that ending the illegal practice remains their top concern.
In response to the scathing report, US chocolate giant Mars reiterated that child labour has no place in cocoa production and said it had committed $1bn to help “fix a broken supply chain”.
Campaign groups dismiss such comments as a duplicitous smokescreen. Indeed, a lawsuit stating that international chocolate manufacturers knowingly profit from abuses against children is currently being heard in the US supreme court.
Prime minister says Canada will ‘stand up loudly’ for human rights after China’s ambassador against welcoming Hong Kong pro-democracy activists
Canada will continue to defend human rights in China, prime minister Justin Trudeau has pledged, after a top Chinese diplomat warned Ottawa against welcoming Hong Kong pro-democracy activists.
China’s ambassador to Ottawa, Cong Peiwu, warned Canada on Thursday against granting asylum to Hong Kong activists, which he said could have consequences for the “health and security” for the 300,000 Canadians living in the theoretically autonomous Chinese territory.
Continue reading...Result follows warnings from human rights groups that UN body’s credibility at stake
Russia and China have been elected to the UN human rights council for the next three years, but Saudi Arabia failed in its attempt to win a place on the 47-seat body.
The result is a severe blow to the country’s efforts to improve its image in the wake of the admitted killing of the Saudi citizen and Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi.
Continue reading...Charities warn that seven months of the pandemic has set the country back decades on child exploitation
Over 70 children were crammed into a bus, heading from Bihar to a sweatshop in the Indian city of Rajasthan, when the authorities pulled it over. Among the faces half hidden behind colourful masks was 12-year-old Deepak Kumar.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, Kumar had been enrolled in grade four at the school in his small district of Gaya in the impoverished Indian state of Bihar. But when Covid-19 hit and the country went into lockdown, the school gates shut across India and have not opened since. With his parents, both daily wage labourers, unable to make money and put food on the table, last month Kumar was sent out to find work.
Continue reading...Foreign Office quango says some of NGO’s claims against machinery firm ‘merit further examination’
The British heavy machinery firm JCB’s sale of equipment used in the destruction of Palestinian villages in the Israeli-occupied West Bank is being examined by a UK government body to determine whether its due diligence process complies with human rights guidelines set by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
The case is likely to test the degree to which multinationals are responsible if their export goods are sold by local distributors in ways that infringe human rights.
Continue reading...Rights campaigners voice concerns as Cuba and Pakistan also expected to be elected
China, Russia, Cuba, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are expected to be elected to the board of the UN human rights council on Tuesday, leaving human rights campaigners in the countries aghast and pleading with EU states to commit to withholding their support.
The Geneva-based monitoring NGO UN Watch described the situation as the equivalent of allowing five convicted arsonists to join the fire brigade.
Continue reading...Thomas Morel-Fort went undercover to capture the lives of undocumented workers toiling inside the Paris and Côte d’Azur homes of the wealthy
At first glance, French photographer Thomas Morel-Fort’s work has all the trappings of a modern-day fairytale: princesses in lavish Parisian mansions; holidays in hilltop villas on the Côte d’Azur; promises of wealth and prosperity.
But his photographs reveal a grittier reality. Morel-Fort’s lens instead alights on the unseen Cinderellas, the Filipino women hired to cook, clean, iron, babysit and obey any commands that come their way, completely beholden to the whims of their demanding, powerful employers.
Continue reading...Narges Mohammadi suffers from neurological condition and was initially sentenced to 10 years in prison
The most prominent human rights activist imprisoned in Iran, Narges Mohammadi, has been released from jail after her sentence was reduced amid renewed fears for her health.
Iran has been hit by a third wave of coronavirus that has seen the daily numbers of new infection break records, with a new high of 4,392 on Thursday.
Continue reading...Human rights groups calling for a probe into president Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-narcotics crackdown say abuses continue
The UN human rights council has been accused of a “collective failure” over its decision not to call for an investigation into the tens of thousands of killings alleged to have occurred under Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs”.
Human rights groups and UN experts had repeatedly called for an inquiry into the anti-narcotics crackdown, launched by the president after he won the 2016 election on a promise to rid the country of drugs.
Continue reading...More than 100 women launch action as activists say practice is serious violation of human rights and privacy
A group of more than 100 Italian women have asked prosecutors to investigate who is behind the burial for nearly a decade of foetuses in graves marked with the names of their mothers in a cemetery in Rome.
The practice only came to light last week after one of the women, whose curiosity was sparked after reading about the so-called “fields of angels” in local newspapers, discovered a plot with a wooden cross bearing her name and the date on which the foetus was buried at Prima Porta cemetery. She subsequently posted about her experience on Facebook.
Continue reading...Adults and children are regularly shackled and locked up in 60 countries, report finds
Hundreds of thousands of people with mental health conditions in 60 countries are still being chained, according to a comprehensive and damning new study.
Human Rights Watch says that men, women and children – some as young as 10 – are regularly shackled or locked in confined spaces for weeks, months, and even years, across Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas.
Continue reading...Revelation contradicts official assurance that no UK-made equipment was used to repress peaceful demonstrations
US law enforcement officers used British anti-riot gear to strike protesters during their controversial policing of Black Lives Matter demonstrations, despite assurances from the Conservative government that no UK-made equipment was used to repress peaceful protest.
Officers deployed at demonstrations in Washington DC hit protesters and in one case a journalist using shields made by the British-based firm DMS Plastics. Video and photographs suggest, and a lawsuit alleges, that officers charged at protesters, rather than acting in self-defence. US forces deny the allegations.
Continue reading...Apparent serious assault is latest in series of alleged human rights abuses by Carabineros
Less than a month before Chile votes on whether to replace its Pinochet-era constitution, police have brutally repressed demonstrators in the capital, Santiago.
On Friday evening officers of the Carabineros police force used plumes of teargas and high-pressure water jets to disperse protesters congregating in Plaza Italia, where pockets of violence flared amid a heavy police presence.
Continue reading...The recently freed documentary maker says jails are inhumane, overcrowded and present a massive coronavirus risk
Zimbabwean journalist Hopewell Chin’ono, jailed for 45 days and charged with inciting violence, has spoken of the appalling abuse and prison conditions he witnessed.
Chin’ono, a prominent documentary maker who was released on bail last month, said he saw inmates at Chikurubi high security prison assaulted by guards for minor offences.
Continue reading...Human rights campaigners warn reinstating capital punishment ‘would be a huge step backwards’, as attack on young woman reignites debate
The brutal killing of a young woman has reignited a debate in Tunisia over capital punishment, with the country’s president suggesting an end to a decades-old moratorium on the death penalty.
President Kais Saied told a meeting of the country’s national security council on Monday that “murder deserves the death penalty” and urged the security forces to redouble their efforts in countering what he characterised as a nationwide increase in crime.
Continue reading...Coronavirus tracking measures handing ‘unchecked powers’ to authoritarian regimes, experts warn
Draconian surveillance measures introduced during the Covid-19 epidemic are handing “unchecked powers” to authoritarian regimes across Asia, human rights experts are warning.
In a report out today, risk analysts warn that “extreme measures and unchecked powers” brought in to tackle Covid-19 could become permanent features of government across the region, and have an impact on the rights and privacy of millions of people.
Continue reading...Allegation follows new law that lets Hong Kong ask for sensitive data if deemed to threaten national security
Big technology companies may already be complying with secret Chinese requests for user information held in Hong Kong and ought to “come clean” about the vulnerability of the data they hold there, a senior US state department official has said.
The allegation of possible secret cooperation between major companies and Hong Kong authorities follows the implementation of a sweeping and controversial new national security law that allows Hong Kong authorities to demand sensitive user data from companies if it is deemed to threaten national security.
Continue reading...Authorities froze bank accounts after criticism of government’s human rights record
Amnesty International has been forced to shut down operations in India and lay off all staff after the Indian government froze its bank accounts.
The Indian enforcement directorate, an agency that investigates economic crimes, froze the accounts of Amnesty’s Indian arm this month after the group published two reports highly critical of the government’s human rights record.
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