Category Archives: Human rights

#ZimbabweanLivesMatter: celebrities join campaign against human rights abuses

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Stars and politicians including Ice Cube and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf have spoken out adding to pressure on President Emmerson Mnanagwa’s regime

A campaign drawing attention to human rights abuses in Zimbabwe is attracting international celebrities and politicians as pressure mounts on President Emmerson Mnanagwa’s government to act.

The #ZimbabweanLivesMatter campaign, which originated in South Africa this week, is currently No 1 on the list of trending topics on Twitter and prominent on other social media platforms.

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The Guardian view on Belarus: slippers and democracy | Editorial

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A remarkable election campaign by the wife of a jailed blogger is causing major problems for ‘Europe’s last dictator’

It takes unusual courage to take on Alexander Lukashenko in an election. In 2010, for example, when the president of Belarus was seeking a fourth term of office, a number of his opponents were arrested and charged with organising mass disorder on polling day. But if your spouse has been jailed and your family threatened, the stakes of standing against the man often described as “Europe’s last dictator” must seem unbearably high.

This is the challenge that 37-year-old Svetlana Tikhanovskaya has accepted, ahead of Belarus’s latest exercise in pseudo-democracy this Sunday. With no previous political experience, Ms Tikhanovskaya took over the presidential candidacy of her husband, Sergei, a well-known blogger, in May, after he was ruled out of the race and imprisoned on trumped-up charges. So far, she is knocking it out of the park.

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Kenyan tea workers file UN complaint against Unilever over 2007 ethnic violence

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Attacks following election at centre of ‘most serious known case of human rights abuse suffered by Unilever workers’

A group of 218 Kenyan tea plantation workers have filed a complaint with the UN against Unilever, alleging that the multinational violated international human rights standards by not adequately assisting its employees, who were attacked when ethnic violence broke out following a disputed election in 2007.

The workers say that Unilever, known in the UK for its PG Tips brand, breached its obligation to remediate any human rights abuses to which it has contributed, which is central to the UN’s guiding principles on business and human rights, and which the company has endorsed. They request the UN’s working group on business and human rights to make a declaration to this effect, and to call on the company to provide redress.

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Holocaust survivor launches legal claim against German railway

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Salo Muller secured €50m from Dutch railway for transporting people to Nazi camps

A Holocaust survivor who successfully campaigned for the Dutch railway to pay compensation for transporting people to the Nazi concentration camps has tabled a legal claim against the German state over the wartime role of the Deutsche Reichsbahn.

Salo Muller, 84, whose parents were taken by rail from Amsterdam to the Dutch transit camp Westerbork, and on to their deaths at Auschwitz, is demanding an apology and financial recompense for about 500 Dutch survivors and about 5,500 next of kin.

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‘Journalism has been criminalised’: Zimbabwean reporter denied bail

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Hopewell Chin’ono is in jail awaiting trial on charges he rejects of inciting violence

A prominent investigative journalist in Zimbabwe has said the struggle against corruption in the country must continue as he was sent back to prison to await trial on charges of incitement of public violence.

Hopewell Chin’ono, an internationally respected reporter, recently published documents raising concerns that powerful individuals in Zimbabwe were profiting from multimillion-dollar deals for essential supplies to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

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Why more than 1 million Uighurs are being held in camps in China – video explainer

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In Xinjiang province, China, more than 1 million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are being held in 're-education' camps that the government claims are benign vocational centres teaching useful career skills. But former camp detainees have described them as de facto prisons implementing mass brainwashing and obedience to the Communist party. As more evidence emerges of torture, forced sterilisation of women and other methods of population reduction, should the situation in Xinjiang be termed a genocide? The Guardian's Lily Kuo explains 

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Jenelyn Kennedy’s death was senseless – we must all ensure she did not die in vain

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The teenager’s violent death has inspired a broader movement against PNG’s endemic domestic abuse

For six full days 19-year-old Jenelyn Kennedy suffered. Her legs and arms were chained, witness statements to police say, her mouth gagged.

They allege she died from being beaten, locked in her room. Her young children in a room down the hall.

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World is legally obliged to pressure China on Uighurs, leading lawyers say

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Exclusive: Sanctions on China and companies operating there, along with use of treaty agreements, can bring Beijing to account, British barristers argue

The international community is legally obliged to take action on China’s alleged abuse of Uighur and other Turkic minorities, a prominent group of British lawyers has said, suggesting nations use sanctions, corporate accountability mechanisms, and international treaties preventing racial discrimination to pressure Beijing.

China’s refusal to be held legally accountable for the widespread and documented allegations did not absolve the global community of responsibility, the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales (BHRC) said in a report released on Wednesday.

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Rohingya face ‘cruel’ caning sentence in Malaysia as hostility to refugees grows

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Survivors of dangerous sea journey convicted amid a rise in hate speech and mass detentions in centres rife with Covid-19

A group of Rohingya refugees who survived a treacherous journey at sea now face caning and seven months in jail after they were convicted under the immigration act in Malaysia, where activists have warned of an alarming rise in xenophobia and inhumane treatment of the migrants.

Hundreds of arrests and a sharp rise in hate speech have shocked refugees and migrants who had seen Malaysia as a welcoming country, particularly for Muslims, despite not being signed up to the 1951 refugee convention.

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Prominent Zimbabwe journalist detained in latest abduction of government critics

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Hopewell Chin’ono had reported on profiting in deals for coronavirus supplies

Authorities in Zimbabwe have detained a prominent journalist known for his reporting on the country’s endemic corruption in the latest in a series of abductions of government critics.

Hopewell Chin’ono was taken from his home in Harare on Monday by eight “state security agents” who broke windows to gain entry and did not produce any warrant, his lawyer said.

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Labour abuses happening ‘at scale’ far beyond Leicester, warn rights groups

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Exploitation occurring in UK farming, construction, contract cleaning, fishing, recycling and domestic work, say labour organisations

The labour abuses and sweatshop conditions reported in factories in Leicester are occurring “at scale” across the UK’s garment, manufacturing and farming industries, campaigners warn.

Reports of similar exploitative conditions and labour abuses alleged to be occurring in Leicester have also been linked to garment factories in Birmingham, Manchester and London, among other places.

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Pompeo claims private property and religious freedom are ‘foremost’ human rights

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US secretary of state seeks to refocus US human rights efforts as he launches report by government commission

Mike Pompeo has sought to redefine the US approach to human rights by giving preference to private property and religious freedom as the foremost “unalienable rights” laid down by America’s Founding Fathers.

Pompeo, launching a draft report by a Commission on Unalienable Rights he established a year ago, also claimed that a proliferation of human rights asserted by different US and international institutions had the effect of diluting those rights he viewed as the most important.

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Shamima Begum wins right to return to UK to challenge citizenship decision

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Appeal court partially overturns earlier ruling that backed Home Office

Shamima Begum, the 20-year-old woman who left east London as a schoolgirl to join Islamic State, should be allowed to return to the UK to challenge the Home Office’s decision to revoke her British citizenship in person.

The court of appeal partially overturned an earlier ruling by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) this year, which held that she had not been illegally rendered stateless while she was in Syria because she was entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship.

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Migrant workers in Qatar face ‘structural racism’ says UN report

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World Cup host heavily criticised over discrimination and ‘coercive conditions’ experienced by labourers from south Asia and Africa

The United Nations has raised “serious concerns of structural racial discrimination against non-nationals” in World Cup host nation Qatar, in a highly critical report to be presented to the UN human rights council this week.

The report, by the UN’s special rapporteur for racism, Tendayi Achiume, is notable for its uncompromising language, saying a “de facto caste system based on national origin” exists in Qatar, “according to which European, North American, Australian and Arab nationalities systematically enjoy greater human rights protections than South Asian and sub-Saharan African nationalities”.

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How Vietnam hopes to open to trade – by opening up its prisons to scrutiny

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As a lucrative deal with the EU looms the country is rushing to repair its reputation on human rights, which has been plagued by reports of forced labour

An inmate grasps a hefty wooden mallet and smashes it through concrete at his feet, working in the shade of a stately white building that his fellow prisoners are constructing in southern Vietnam.

Police officers in bold green uniforms usher everyone away from the men working in faded, olive and white-striped prison garb.

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China’s colonial mindset over Hong Kong | Letter

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Prof Christopher R Hughes believes a letter by Dr Hugh Goodacre on the crisis in Hong Kong does not stand up to historical scrutiny

Dr Hugh Goodacre’s letter (5 July) in response to Simon Jenkins (Britain can’t protect Hong Kong from China – but it can do right by its people, 2 July) claims that the people of Hong Kong gained the democratic right to vote on their future because China “stood up in the world”, which would have been unthinkable under British rule. This does not stand up to historical scrutiny.

As early as January 1958, Zhou Enlai warned the Macmillan government against supporting a “conspiracy” to make Hong Kong a self-governing dominion. In the 1960s, China insisted Britain should resist US pressure to introduce self-government, as the status of Hong Kong was to China’s benefit. Beijing continued to resist the introduction of democracy throughout the Sino-British negotiations and its current behaviour confirms its intention to act like a colonial power. Its narrative that the current protests are due to the whipping up of anti-Chinese hysteria by outside forces reflects this mindset by denying agency to the people of Hong Kong.
Prof Christopher R Hughes
Department of international relations, London School of Economics

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Brutal deaths of exploited migrants shine a spotlight on Italy’s farms

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Covid-19 exposed the country’s reliance on ‘invisible workers’ enduring wretched conditions – and a new visa scheme has not addressed the problem

Earlier this summer, as millions of Italians were locked down inside their homes, fruit and vegetables were left to rot in the fields despite the cost to the country’s economy.

Italy’s informal refugee and migrant workforce, who had previously worked long hours in wretched conditions for paltry wages to bring produce off the fields, were absent from the farms.

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Xu Zhangrun, prominent critic of Xi Jinping, released from detention

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The law professor has been released six days after a police raid at his Beijing home, friends say

A Beijing law professor who has been an outspoken critic of China’s president, Xi Jinping, and the ruling Communist party was released on Sunday after six days of detention, his friends have said.

Xu Zhangrun, a constitutional law professor at the prestigious Tsinghua University, returned home on Sunday morning but remained under surveillance and was not free to speak publicly about what happened, one of his friends, who declined to be identified, told Reuters.

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Donald Trump is a hypocrite on China – but China deserves to be condemned | Jonathan Freedland

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Beijing is crushing human rights in Hong Kong, and is accused of genocide against the Uighurs. The world cannot stand by

Donald Trump taints everything he touches. If he supports a cause, he damages it. If he takes a stance, the instinct of most self-respecting liberals is to rush to the opposing side. So when Trump rails against China, a favourite bete noire, it can make a progressive pause.

That’s especially true when the US president lurches so easily into casual bigotry – referring to the coronavirus as “kung flu” – and when his hypocrisy is so rank. Thanks to his former national security adviser, John Bolton, we know that, for all his talk, Trump begged Beijing to meddle in this year’s election in his favour, breezily granting US blessing to what Amnesty International calls the “gulag” of camps in Xinjiang, in which China holds a million Uighur Muslims against their will.

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UK’s Magnitsky law does little to stem flow of dirty money from Russia

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Sanctions target mid- or low-level officials and will have little impact on the wealthiest

He is known as Vladimir Putin’s enforcer. Almost every criminal case in Russia – from Pussy Riot to anti-government street protests – passes his desk. But as of last week Moscow’s top law officer, Alexander Bastrykin, is no longer welcome in Britain. He is banned from owning property, opening a bank account or popping over from Moscow for a weekend jaunt.

Bastrykin, the head of Russia’s powerful investigative committee, was one of 25 Russians sanctioned by the UK. All were allegedly involved in human rights abuses – specifically in the mistreatment of Sergei Magnitsky, who was beaten to death in 2009 in a Moscow jail. Bastrykin covered up the case, No 10 says. Others named and shamed include judges, interior ministry officials and prison staff.

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