Julian Borger in the Guardian of 4 May 2023 tells how an NGO teams up with Hollywood to sharpen human rights focus.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has decided to take on Hollywood to improve the visibility and awareness of humanitarian issues in popular culture. As part of the move, the advocacy group has signed up with a talent agent firm, Activist Artists Management (AAM), to provide “scripted and unscripted content in film and television”, an HRW statement said…
The group has set up a department of three staff and additional consultants, to deal with Hollywood full-time – advising writers and directors on incorporating realistic treatment of human rights issues into their work.
“We’re excited to work with Hollywood to spread that message and equip committed activists, advocates and artists standing up for justice through the stories they tell,” said Tirana Hassan, HRW’s new executive director.
Amanda Alampi, the organisation’s director of campaigns and public engagement, argued it was a logical step towards deepening the impact of HRW’s investigative work. “We have consistently done human rights investigations and told real-life stories to try to put a human face on it. But increasingly, we think that scripted storytelling is going to be really important in this area,” Alampi said. “So what we’re trying to do is think about – how do we insert a positive human rights message into popular culture? And Hollywood seems like a great place to start.”
She said one way HRW would try to wield influence is to work with producers and writers “to encourage them to think about human rights to choose to tell stories more responsibly” in movie projects already in the pipeline.
“Then a second area is really about whether we can pitch story ideas that would actually tell effective human rights stories,” Alampi added. “We already use our meticulous fact-finding to sway policymakers and put perpetrators in the dock. This is about reaching a broader public with stories that illustrate human rights issues – especially through unexpected storytellers and platforms, like space or superheroes.”..
Alampi argued that allowing Hollywood to script and fictionalise true stories would not impinge on HRW’s reputation for factual accuracy, because the group would not be central to creating the fiction, but would simply pass on ideas that could be a starting point for movies with a human rights message.
“This is not about getting attention for HRW or getting us into a story, it’s about seeding human rights through effective storytelling, so I don’t think that’s a concern,” Alampi said. “Often our work in entertainment advocacy is focused on being a connector between our partners, impacted people and storytellers who could help share those stories with wider audiences.”
Bernie Cahill, an AAM founding partner, said: “Activist is honored to partner with Human Rights Watch to amplify the important stories of its decades-long fight for justice, dignity, compassion and equality for people everywhere.”
Being an environmental human rights defender is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Every day, government authorities, companies and other non-state actors seek to silence environmental defenders on the frontlines of the global climate and environmental movement through unwarranted persecution, harassment, detention and even murder. As we commemorate International Earth Day on 22 April, an annual celebration honouring those who fight for a clean environment, RFK Human Rights is calling for the international community and national authorities to redouble efforts to strengthen and fortify protection mechanisms for environmental defenders.
According to Front Line Defenders, land, indigenous peoples’ and environmental rights defenders were the most targeted human rights defender (HRD) sector in 2022. Representatives of national governments, private companies, militias and other non-state actors killed 194 land, environmental and indigenous defenders in 2022 accounting for 48 percent of all murdered defenders. Environmental defenders also face routine arbitrary arrest and detention, criminalization, physical abuse, death threats and other forms of repression. Across the world, sparse and tepid investigations into killings of environmental defenders have led to endemic levels of impunity and limited prosecutions. See: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2023/04/04/front-line-defenders-just-published-its-global-analysis-2022-new-record-of-over-400-killings-in-one-year/
As part of our work to protect civic space by defending fundamental freedoms, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights regularly works to ensure that environmental defenders have ready access to protection and accountability mechanisms. Through our strategic litigation programs, we collaborate with local partners to confront these systematic abuses through active litigation at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and at the United Nations. Under the auspices of our Speak Truth to Power campaign, we continue to provide human rights education programs that combine storytelling and interactive learning to provide the next generation of environmental defenders with the tools they will need to create change.
Together with various coalitions we constantly bring attention to the critical and invaluable work for environmental defenders. Just last week, RFK Human Rights joined dozens of civil society groups from across the globe to raise awareness about the forced disappearance of Mexican environmental defenders Ricardo Arturo Lagunes Gasca and Antonio Díaz Valencia. Both defenders disappeared on Jan. 15 only hours after participating in an anti-mining community meeting. The disappearances take place amid ongoing violence and persecution of land, indigenous and environmental defenders seeking to protect the environment in Mexico. Impunity for the killing of environmental defenders remains disturbingly high in Mexico– in 2021, according to Global Witness, nearly 95 percent of murders did not result in prosecution.
On 20 March 2023, following the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) findings, United Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a clarion call “to massively fast-track climate efforts by every country and every sector and on every timeframe.” From the UN Sustainable Development Summit to the UN Climate Conference (COP 28), 2023 is replete with opportunities to institutionalize and codify the cherished ideals of environmentalism which we celebrate on International Earth Day. The international community, together with national governments and the private sector, must seize these crucial moments to publicly recognize the essential work of environmental defenders and recommit to ensure that they can conduct their crucial activities free from repression, reprisal and persecution.
From June 13-15, 2023 the 15th edition of the Oslo Freedom Forum will take place at the Oslo Konserthus in Oslo, Norway. You can learn about the struggle for freedom directly from dissidents and human rights defenders on the frontlines. The theme of this year’s Oslo Freedom Forum (OFF) is: Celebrating Solidarity. This theme honors the unity, mentorship, and community that HRF and our global community — from frontline dissidents to journalists, philanthropists, and technologists — have fostered in the last 15 years. It recognizes that only together can we defeat tyranny.
WITNESS recognizes the great risks that environmental defenders take to stand up to power, and understand that the collection of visual evidence is only one strategy communities use to protect their environmental human rights. It wants to support this movement by sharing information and good practices to help community-based documenters collect visual documentation of environmental human rights crimes and violations so that it can be effectively used in advocacy and accountability processes. This Guide is primarily for community members who:
Live where industries that mine, extract oil and gas, build dams, cut timber, clear land for agri-business developments, grab land for high-end real-estate development, and do so in a way that violates the environmental human rights of communities
Want to—and can—safely document these violations with phones, cameras, and drones
Want to—and can—safely use the documentation to protect human rights
Would like to help train others to safely collect relevant and reliable visual documentation for human rights advocacy and accountability.
Olga Solovyeva of Advox, a Global Voices project dedicated to protecting freedom of expression online, posted on 19 April 2023 a piece statign that the impact of technology on politics cannot be ignored anymore. It is a long piece that I copy in its totality as it is worth reading and of great rlevance for human rights defenders:
Amidst the rising influence of technology in global politics, particularly in authoritarian regimes, the imperative to acknowledge the political accountability of tech corporations has become increasingly apparent. In recent years, the ramifications of disregarding ethical practices underscore the urgent need for tech companies to prioritize responsible conduct. The manipulation of information online, traffic rerouting, restricting access to the internet, and operating surveillance are some examples of how states can misuse technology. While technology was once expected to become a symbol of resistance and liberation, illiberal regimes now use it to produce various forms of digital unfreedom that extend into material reality. But how do we ensure that Big Tech contributes to democratic practices rather than political oppression?
Why do tech companies have political responsibility?
In an innovation driven sector like technology, legislation cannot keep pace with new developments. Often, neither users nor makers consider the negative consequences of a new technology until they have experienced them, and the industry is left struggling with the ramifications of harm and, as a consequence, its own expanding responsibilities.
Digital activists from Global Voices Advox report on the growing use of digital technology for advancing authoritarian regimes worldwide, focusing, among others, on issues such as surveillance, mis/disinformation and access to the internet in different contexts. Autocrats use the whole scale of digital technologies available. In Russia, where the interest of the state lies in keeping opposition views from the information environment, there is a strong emphasis on disinformation and censorship. Tanzania and Sudan are known for internet shutdowns, while in Turkey and Morocco, cases of public digital surveillance have become more common.
At the same time, the tech sector does not necessarily play on the dark side only. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Elon Musk’s SpaceX continued to support Starlink and provide internet access in Ukraine after the Russian invasion disrupted services. And yet, his recent purchase of Twitter brought multiple controversies, further empowering the attention economy of social media, which leads to fragmentation, polarisation and the decline of the public sphere. It’s impossible to separate tech companies from politics, and their role tends to cause controversy.
Good apple, bad apple
If you’re reading this text from your MacBook or iPhone, you probably have recognized the difference between living in a new information space with much less targeted advertising. In February 2022, Apple introduced its new privacy features allowing users to enable or block personal data tracing from the apps installed on the company’s devices, an innovation with significant political, social and economic consequences.
It’s crucial to understand the business decision that underpins the ongoing debate on personal data ethics and regulation. Protecting Apple users’ personal data means they will not be targeted with personally crafted advertising, and their data will not be used to predict consumer behaviour, which enables users’ right to privacy — one of the central categories of online service providers’ moral responsibilities and, essentially, a human right. This guarantee of the right attracts consumers to Apple products.
At the same time, this architectural decision caused significant distress to the market, as the stock prices of Meta and other social media companies plunged that day. Introducing an opt-out particularly for personal data collection means shrinking their potential advertising revenues as less data becomes available to develop personalized ads.
Apple made a policy-level decision, a milestone in the discussion on issues of user privacy regulation. Effectively, it is a subject of government concern on the intersection of information and business ethics, law and policy. This case illustrates the power of one company, which can be not just a game changer in the conversation on tech regulation but a shock for the industry, pushing other businesses to shift their business models and challenge the dynamics of Big Tech.
What is this decision for Apple? An enactment of an ethical stand signalling its political responsibility? An act of an excellent corporate citizen innovating to enable its customers’ rights for privacy? Or is it a marketing move to boost the sale of Apple products through engaging in a non-market activity? Regardless of the motivation, we have witnessed a tech company making a political change on an international level, since Apple products are in demand and sold worldwide.
At the same time, the company engages in other activities that may be seen as controversial. Along with other Big Tech companies, Apple increased its lobbying spending in 2022 as businesses face increased pressure from lawmakers raising antitrust concerns to curb the power of tech giants. Meanwhile, stepping outside the liberal democratic political climate, Apple faces decisions that challenge its political stand. In 2021 the company confirmed storing all personal data of Chinese users inside China-based data centres. China is known for using surveillance as a tool for political prosecution. Even though Apple claimed to maintain a high level of security, journalist sources report that the company handed over the keys to the government. The same year, Apple removed a smart voting app, one of the tools developed by the opposition in Russia to outplay electoral fraud. In both cases, the company’s decision-making had severe and direct political consequences, just like the decision to block personal data tracing on its devices. The only difference was the kind of pressure put on a company by the political system it was operating in.
Where does the political responsibility of Big Tech end?
In 2022 the world saw the global expansion of authoritarian rule, affecting developing states and established democracies. According to the 2022 Freedom House report, only 20 percent of the earth’s population live in a free country, while the remaining 80 percent are equally split between a partially free and not free world. The world is getting more authoritarian, and the political regime of a liberal democracy today is the exception rather than the rule.
Different autocracies pose challenging obstacles to tech companies, which remain the key producers of innovative technology. The role of the state defines the potential expectations of business, and their relationship patterns. In autocracies, political participation and public deliberation face repression through state authorities, and business is shaped by a political economy with the elements of state intervention. The state prevails, and it has more direct control over the company when needed, and the interference in economic life is ordinary and unpredictable. Autocrats are famous for censorship, propaganda, and interventions in electoral systems, all of which are delivered by technology provided by business.
One of the most common examples could be the situation in which a business organization has to obey the law of an authoritarian state to maintain political legitimacy, while the law itself may undermine the moral legitimacy of the company. The case of Apple in China is an example of this. However, it can have different consequences for companies in other countries. For instance, Verizon (the subsidiary that bought out Yahoo! in 2017) was sued for handing data to the Chinese government that led to political prosecution and the torture of dissidents. In authoritarian regimes, legislation is often designed to set out the specific requirements and processes for government agencies to obtain access to personal data, including surveillance purposes. Even though data handovers upon the request, e.g., the subpoena, are common for democratic regimes as well, the difference is how such data is further used and whether there are grounds for balancing it out with other institutional procedures.
Elaborating on the political responsibility of Big Tech
As the intersection of technology and politics continues to expand, grappling with the political implications of new creations becomes imperative for tech innovators. They must take proactive steps to develop robust political responsibility strategies while navigating authoritarian and other ethically fraught environments. Transparency is one way to meet these goals.
The practice of environmental social and governance (ESG) reporting and disclosure on ESG issues is an excellent example of how mandated transparency has led to accountability, and one that can be adapted to technological innovation. Openly revealing who has bought a certain technology will limit the ability of authoritarian governments to abuse it, for example. Additionally, integrating political responsibility as a part of responsible investment portfolios could represent a meaningful step forward to starting an open dialogue about tech, politics and society. This could be done by disclosing on direct political engagement of companies and adding additional transparency about contexts in which business operates.
Yet, such openness would be even more problematic — and potentially impossible — for tech companies that have been developed within the borders and hence the jurisdiction of authoritarian regimes. One of the most illustrative examples is the case of Yandex, a multinational company headquartered in Russia. The company has grown into a major tech player, often referred to as the “Russian Google.” Despite making an occasional compromise with the political system, the company kept the reputation of the most liberal company in the country while showing steady business growth.
However, when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Yandex faced significant pressure, legislative restrictions, international sanctions and criticism from the public. From the first weeks of the war, YandexNews, daily visited by 40 million people, has been indexing only stories from state-owned media, amplifying the narratives of the “special operation.” Abiding by the law became equivalent to contributing to univocal media coverage dominated by the Russian state.
The war became the most significant trigger that affected the company, as the share price of this prominent business lost over 75 percent of its value. Many company employees, including top management, resigned or left the country in protest of the war led by Russia. Personal sanctions were applied to the company’s CEO and founder. Under pressure, the company sold their media assets to a holding loyal to the state. In December, the company’s founder left Yandex Russia but remained the key shareholder.
Scenarios like these establish a controversial ground for businesses that must come to terms with an authoritarian state’s rules to keep their business going. Albert Hirshman’s “Exit, Voice, Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations and States” suggests a framework of three strategies for responding to the perceived decrease in performance of an organization or a state. Using it as a guide to an organizational strategy, a tech company facing authoritarianism could leave, protest or comply. However, as the suppression of public dissent usually characterizes authoritarianism, realistically, only two strategies are left: to stay or to go.
Nevertheless, both strategies bring further ethical concerns. With a lot said about the downsides of collaborating with autocrats, how ethical is it towards the employees and customers for a business to leave the declining state? Moreover, the business remains a profit-generating enterprise first of all, and very few countries in the world would make a market for a product so the company’s leadership could keep to the standard of political responsibility. We can’t all live in Norway, after all.
As the influence of tech companies continues to grow, it falls to civil society, journalists, tech users, and watchdog organisations to keep these firms accountable. Demanding transparency and collaborating to come up with new fair policies that could support tech companies in tough contexts could be one way forward. Meanwhile, it is important to educate the public and create incentives for consuming tech other than instant gratification. By working together, these stakeholders can start shaping a more ethical tech landscape, where common good carries more weight than corporate interest.
Human rights defenders around the world are coming together in powerful coalitions and turning to international human rights laws and systems to achieve justice and accountability. And while the threats and challenges remain enormous, we’re starting to win! says ISHR in its latest annual report, outlining key impacts during the last year and its vision for 2023 and the years ahead.
See more achievements by visiting the website! In a recent conversation with Björk, environmental activist Greta Thunberg reflected that hope is not something you feel, but something you do. ‘When people act,’ she said, ‘they create hope’. In 2023, fuelled by indignation and sustained by hope, ISHR’s commitment is to provide solidarity to defenders, contribute to positive momentum and, with your support, achieve even more significant human rights wins!
On Thursday 20 April, the Lebanese lawyer, human rights defender and director of the NGO Legal Agenda Nizar Saghiyé was summoned to appear before the Beirut Bar Council. The summons followed Mr Saghiyé’s criticism of an amendment to the Code of Ethics of the Beirut Bar Association which prevents lawyers from speaking publicly in the media without prior authorisation from the President of the Bar Association.
EuroMed Rights, Front Line Defenders, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), both within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, express their support for Mr Nizar Saghiyé and strongly condemns this summons. Requiring lawyers to obtain prior authorisation from the President of their Bar Association before making any media statements curtails their freedom of expression.
The modification of the Code of Ethics published by the Beirut Bar Association on 3 March 2023, interferes with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which was ratified by Lebanon in 1972. In addition to the ICCPR, the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers makes clear that whilst states bear the primary obligation to protect lawyers, they share this with the bar associations (Principle 25). In addition, Principle 23 states that “Lawyers like other citizens are entitled to freedom of expression, belief, association and assembly. In particular, they shall have the right to take part in public discussion of matters concerning the law, the administration of justice and the promotion and protection of human rights and to join or form local, national or international organizations and attend their meetings, without suffering professional restrictions by reason of their lawful action or their membership in a lawful organization. In exercising these rights, lawyers shall always conduct themselves in accordance with the law and the recognized standards and ethics of the legal profession.“
Currently, the Lebanese government is debating a new media law behind closed doors and there has been an increase in the number of arrests of journalists. Recently the President of the Lebanese Bar Association recently denounced the “chaos and confusion” allegedly created by the proliferation of websites and social networking platforms. This latest summons is a worrying development in an already troubling trend towards limiting freedom of expression of Nizar Saghiyé, the Bar’s lawyers, amongst others.
On 18 April 2023 CHRD called on the Chinese government to immediately release human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng and his wife Xu Yan, who have been criminally detained and denied access to lawyers of their choice. CHRD also calls on the Chinese government to end its de facto house arrest of Yu Wensheng and Xu Yan’s 18-year-old son. CHRD urges the EU, EU member states, the US, UN bodies, and other member of the international community to forcefully condemn the Chinese government’s detention of Yu Wensheng and Xu Yan. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/03/03/breaking-news-mea-laureate-yu-wensheng-released/
On April 13 at approximately 4:00 pm, human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng and his wife Xu Yan left their home in Beijing to travel by subway to attend an event at the European Delegation. They were invited to an event with the EU’s Ambassador to China Jorge Toledo Albiñana according to Politico.
However, Yu and Xu were prevented from accessing the subway by four plainclothes police officers. One of the officers, a state security police officer, told them that they were being summoned to a police station, which Yu Wensheng announced on Twitter. The four police officers took them to the Shijingshan Bajiao police station. Human rights lawyers Wang Quanzhang, Li Heping, and Bao Longjun were also harassed by authorities during this period.
The EU Delegation to China tweeted on April 13, “We demand their immediate, unconditional release. We have lodged a protest with MFA [China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs] against this unacceptable treatment.”
According to Rights and Livelihood Watch, on April 15 in the evening, approximately seven police officers came to Yu Wensheng and Xu Yan’s home, and they orally read a criminal detention notice to the couple’s son, who had just turned 18 years old. The pair were criminally detained on the charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” Police would not allow the son to take photos, nor would they give him the criminal detention notice. Also, even though no warrant was presented, police proceeded to search the home and carried off many items.
On April 16, two lawyers, Song Yusheng and Peng Jian, paid a visit to Yu and Xu’s son to bring him fruit, and fill out paperwork to obtain legal status to represent Yu and Xu. There were two people guarding the door of Yu and Xu’s home. Lawyer Song knocked on the door, and it was answered by the son, but the lawyer saw that in the home there were also two officers inside, one plainclothes and one wearing a uniform. The plainclothes officer, who said his name was Lu Kai, asked what they wanted. The lawyers said that they were there to visit the son and have him sign an agreement (委托书) to entrust them as lawyers. However, the plainclothes police officers said that Yu Wensheng told them that he “doesn’t want to have lawyers at this stage” and that Xu Yan had already found two lawyers.
Yu Wensheng’s detention may also be related to his condemnation of the sentencing of Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi, two prominent pro-democracy figures. On April 12, Yu Wensheng wrote on Twitter that he had been visited at his home by Shijingshan police for a tweet he had sent out on April 9 that said, “[I] strongly condemn the Chinese authorities heavy sentence of scholar Xu Zhiyong to 14 years and of Lawyer Ding Jiaxi to 12 years! I pay my respects to Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi, who have worked hard in the struggle for freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. I believe that one day the Dream of a Beautiful China will be realized.”
In March 2022, Yu Wensheng was released from prison after serving four years and three months on the charge of “inciting subversion of state power.” Yu was taken away by police in 2018 the day after he released an open letter recommending changes to China’s Constitution, including a call for elections and the creation of an oversight system for the Chinese Communist Party.
The Chinese government has put heightened pressure on human rights award winners. Yu Wensheng was the recipient of the prestigious Martin Ennals Award in 2021 [see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/69fc7057-b583-40c3-b6fa-b8603531248e] and the winner of the Franco-German Prize for Human Rights and the Rule of Law in 2018. Previous winners of awards have been subjected to extra-legal abuse. While Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo was at one point granted “medical parole,” he was not allowed the freedom of movement to seek medical treatment outside of China and died in de facto state custody. Likewise, Hu Jia, a prominent human rights defender and winner of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 2008, was prevented from seeing his dying father in his final days. Hu Jia was deprived of his liberty and “forcibly traveled” starting from March 4 of this year. Being “traveled” is a common tactic used by state security officers to ensure journalists at the annual March Two Sessions meetings or other “sensitive” political events do not talk to dissidents. Hu Jia’s father passed away from pancreatic cancer on March 9, 2023.
The Chinese government is preventing defendants in sensitive cases from having lawyers of their own choice and instead mandating government-approved lawyers in order to prevent real legal defense. On February 10, 2023, digital rights activist Ruan Xiaohuan was sentenced to seven years in prison on the charge of “inciting subversion of state power.” His wife, Ms. Bei, wanted to hire an experienced lawyer for the appeals stage, and so she went to Beijing to talk with Shang Baojun. However, upon landing in Beijing, she was taken away by eight Shanghai police. Meanwhile lawyer Shang Baojun tried to visit Ruan at the Yangpu Detention Center in Shanghai, but staff there would not allow for the visit since they claimed that Ruan already had two legal aid lawyers.
On 11 April 2023 10 NGOs demanded the dropping of charges against journalist Nguyen Lan Thang and a fair trial by admitting observation.
Dear President Võ Văn Thưởng,
We are writing to express our concern about the ongoing persecution of Mr Nguyen Lan Thang, a journalist, and we demand that he be released immediately, and all charges dropped against him. Mr Nguyen Lan Thang is a victim of persecution by the Vietnamese government and has been criminally charged due to his work as a journalist. Mr Nguyen Lan Thang is one of many journalists and activists throughout the country who is facing ongoing persecution for reporting of the government of Viet Nam in a critical manner.
On 5 July 2022, Mr. Thang was arrested for “making, storing, distributing, or disseminating information, documents, and items against the State” under article 117 of the 2015 Criminal Code. He has been held in incommunicado detention in Hanoi’s Detention Centre No. 1 for more than seven months, during which time he was prohibited from meeting with his family members and legal counsel. After being arrested in July 2022, he did not meet his lawyer for the first time until 16 February 2023.
According to his lawyers, Mr. Thang will be tried on 12 April 2023 at a closed hearing at Hanoi’s People’s Court. Failing the dropping of charges and release of Mr Nguyen Lan Thang before the trial commences, we demand that his right to a fair trial be upheld, at least in part, by ensuring that media and the public may observe it, as is the obligation of the state of Viet Nam under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
The right to a public trial is guaranteed under Article 14 of the ICCPR with few exceptions. We understand that Mr Nguyen Lan Thang has been denied this human right. According to Article 14 of the ICCPR:
“the press and the public may be excluded from all or part of a trial for reasons of morals, public order (order public) or national security in a democratic society, or when the interest of the private lives of the parties so requires, or to the extent strictly necessary in the opinion of the court in special circumstances where publicity would prejudice the interests of justice; but any judgment rendered in a criminal case or in a suit at law shall be made public except where the interest of juvenile persons otherwise requires or the proceedings concern matrimonial disputes or the guardianship of children.”
Paragraph 28 of General Comment No 32 of the Human Rights Committee clarifies that the importance of public hearings “ensures the transparency of proceedings and thus provides an important safeguard for the interest of the individual and of society at large”. The Committee has made clear in paragraph 29 that the special circumstances that allow exclusion of the press and public from a trial are “exceptional circumstances”, and otherwise a trial must be open to ensure transparency and assist in guaranteeing the human right to a fair trial.
Despite efforts to obtain further information on the charges and the rationale the court has adopted in excluding the press and public from the trial of Mr Nguyen Lan Thang, there is no information that we possess that indicates any exceptional circumstances exist that would allow the closed nature of this trial under international human rights law.
Accordingly, we demand that the right to fair trial is respected and that members of the public, the press, the United Nations, and the diplomatic community be allowed to monitor the proceedings. We call on the government of Viet Nam, including its courts, to uphold their international obligations and ensure the human rights of those within the justice system.
Yours sincerely,
Access Now
Amnesty International
ARTICLE 19
Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation
On 12 April 2023 Human Rights Watch reported that United Arab Emirates are continuing to incarcerate at least 51 Emirati prisoners who completed their sentences between one month and nearly four years ago.
The prisoners are all part of the grossly unfair “UAE94” mass trial of 69 critics of the government, whose convictions violated their rights to free expression, association, and assembly. UAE authorities are using baseless counterterrorism justifications for continuing to hold them past their completed sentences.
“Prisoners in the UAE94 case have already suffered tremendously after years in prison following a grossly unfair trail,” said Joey Shea, United Arab Emirates researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Emirati authorities should free them immediately and finally put an end to this decade-long ordeal. Prominent UAE partners, including the United States and COP28 organizers, should press UAE authorities for their immediate release.”
The prisoners were among 94 people detained beginning in March 2012 in a wave of arbitrary arrests amid an unprecedented crackdown on dissent. The case had a chilling effect on freedom of expression, assembly, and association.
In July 2013, Abu Dhabi’s Federal Supreme Court convicted 69 of the defendants, sentencing 5 to 7 years in prison, 56 to 10 years, and 8 in absentia to 15 years, with 25 acquitted. The verdict could not be appealed, in violation of international law, because it was issued by the UAE’s highest court. As of March 2023, 51 had completed their sentences but remain imprisoned with no clear legal basis, according to Emirati activists and court documents. Some prisoners completed their sentences as early as July 2019.
At least four of the 51 received a Public Prosecution letter saying that they were on Munasaha during what was supposed to be their last three months in detention, activists and family members told Human Rights Watch. After three months, these detainees were taken in front of a judge, who determined they still held “terrorist thoughts” and ruled that they needed further “rehabilitation.”
Under article 48 of the counterterrorism law, the public prosecutor may place someone convicted of a terrorist offense in a counselling or Munasaha program in the prison where they were serving their sentence, under counselling center supervision.
The counterterrorism law sets no time limit for continued incarceration and instead requires the state security public prosecution to report to the court every three months. The court may order a person’s release if it finds that “his or her condition so allows.” It is not clear if the defendant has any right to attend the hearing or see or challenge the evidence used to justify their detention.
The decade of unjust imprisonment has had devastating consequences for the prisoners’ families. A family member said that the young child of one of the prisoners still does not understand why her father was in prison. “She asks me, we love our country and our leaders, why are they are doing this to my father?” the family member said.
Many prisoners are being held in the notorious al-Razeen prison, and many are alleged to be in solitary confinement. A family member said, “All the prisoners are suffering there, they don’t have their rights and it is very hard to visit them.” Another family member said: “Throughout the years, the conditions are getting worse.”
Visits are irregular and difficult to procure, the family members said. Families often drive for hours to the prison in the middle of the desert, only to be denied a visit with no explanation. Family members also said that phone conversations are often cut off mid-call with no explanation. Some prisoners have not been able to speak with their family members by phone for years.
Other family members said there have been months-long periods in which a prisoner, as one family member said, “totally disappeared” with “no calls, no nothing,” leading the family to believe that “maybe he is dead.” Prisoners are also often denied books and pictures.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in article 15 prohibits retroactive criminal punishment. The United Nations Human Rights Committee, in its general comment on article 9 of the ICCPR, said, “if, under the most exceptional circumstances, a present, direct and imperative threat is invoked to justify the detention of persons considered to present such a threat, the burden of proof lies on States parties to show that the individual poses such a threat and that it cannot be addressed by alternative measures, and that burden increases with the length of the detention.”
“By arbitrarily extending the unjust sentences of peaceful critics using bogus counterterrorism justifications without due process, the UAE again shows its total disregard for the rule of law,” Shea said.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 