On 2 May 2026, several newspapers reported on plans to vet human rights defenders in Indonesia :
The government’s plan to screen and determine who qualifies as a human rights activist to decide who receives legal safeguards has met with backlash from civil society groups, who warn the move risks state interference in rights protections.
The plan came as the Human Rights Ministry is seeking to introduce changes to the 1999 Human Rights Law and issue a new ministerial regulation to strengthen legal protections for human rights activists, citing concerns over criminalisation against those involved in advocacy works.
To ensure legal safeguards can be provided for activists, Human Rights Minister Natalius Pigai said his ministry would form an assessor team to evaluate whether detained individuals meet the criteria as human rights defenders.
The assessment will be based on strict criteria focusing on the individual’s actions at the time of the incident rather than self-declared status or public recognition. The team will review each case individually to ensure decisions are made based on the context of ongoing legal cases.
Legal protection, the minister stressed, would only be extended to those defending public interests, particularly vulnerable or marginalised groups. Those who are proven to have acted with personal or financial motives would be excluded.
“It’s possible that someone widely known as a human rights activist, at a certain moment, may be found by the assessor team to be acting for (financial gain). In such cases, they can’t be considered a human rights activist,” Mr Pigai said on April 29, as quoted by Antara.
He added those meeting the criteria would be shielded from prosecution from the earliest stages of legal proceedings.
On 15 October 2025, Fariba Nawa wrote about Mahshid Nazemi, Iranian human rights defender.
Mahshid Nazemi, an Iranian human rights activist, left her home one day in the fall of 2022 to walk to the corner store to buy yogurt for dinner. The sun had set in the valley in Isparta, a city in southwestern Turkey, and the air was crisp. Nazemi pulled the hat of her coat over her head. The streets were empty. She was tired and hungry. Suddenly, she saw two cars turn on their lights. A dated, navy-colored sedan with tinted windows drove behind her slowly as she walked. Nazemi became suspicious and stopped. The car braked and a pudgy, bearded man with a khaki shirt exited, cursing at her, calling her a prostitute. “Shut your mouth or we’ll send you to Iran in a suitcase,” Nazemi recounted the man saying. “Your sister is on death row. You want to go to Iran in a suitcase?”
A year later, she stood at the exact spot in Isparta, known for its roses and lavenders, as she retold her ordeal.
Nazemi’s case underscores a broader pattern of Iranian activists abroad facing intimidation and pressure from Tehran, despite the regime’s public denials of involvement.
For Nazemi, she says her plight began long ago as a woman in Iran, where women don’t have equal rights, and the situation has been likened to gender apartheid. Women can’t sing in public, their supreme leader has said riding a bike is shameful — though some women defy the taboo and ride bikes — their testimony is considered half of a man’s in court and their right to inheritance is less than men. Nazemi has survived a lot — imprisonment, sexual harassment, death threats and a deportation camp.
The night she was followed and harassed in the street would be a prelude to a series of dubious events terrorizing her life as a dissident in exile.
At that time, Nazemi was in Turkey, which has become an opposition haven for many Iranians. She was speaking out about political prisoners and crackdowns on protesters, while also helping dissidents in Turkey get legal aid and financial support. She’s been a dogged activist on behalf of women in her native Iran. Nazemi wasn’t doing that work alone. Her oldest sister Pouran Nazemi was at the forefront of the movement in Tehran. The renowned human rights defender has been in and out of Iranian prisons throughout her life. Nazemi said it was Pouran’s sacrifices that encouraged her to become an activist, too.
A selfie of Pouran (left) and Mahshid Nazemi nine years ago in Iran. The sisters haven’t seen each other in-person for a decade.Courtesy of Mahshid Nazemi
The sisters participated in previous uprisings in Iran, demanding democratic rights for women and minorities. They were both arrested in 2016, but Mahshid Nazemi was released. Her family told her to flee, so she went to neighboring Turkey and applied for asylum to a third country. When Pouran was also released from jail, she remained in Iran. But the sisters worked as a team online across the border. They talked to the opposition media, like Voice of America Farsi, making a case for regime change and a revolution.
Instead, the hardline clerical government arrested 22,000 protesters, including Pouran once again in 2022. The government also killed about 550 people inside Iran, calling them traitors and agitators. Then the regime came for those in the diaspora.
“Iran continues to target women human rights defenders abroad, and among the typical and easy-to-use methods are digital threats, such as phishing and hacking attempts, smear and defamation campaigns, as well as threats against family members in Iran,” said Michael Michaelsen, who studies Iran and transnational repression at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto.
Nazemi has been the victim of all these tactics but she said the regime went a step further in sending their thugs to threaten her in person that evening in 2022. She reported the incident to the Turkish police, but they didn’t believe her until they found CCTV footage of the incident. A few days later, a Turkish immigration agent called and asked her to come to their office. She thought she might be getting asylum to a third country, somewhere safer than Turkey. But instead, the agent accused her of making a fake ID card, which Nazemi denied. It’s a scene she remembers vividly.
“I didn’t make a fake card. I’m not going to admit to something I didn’t do. If you want to deport me, do so,” Nazemi told the agent. Nazemi was detained and moved into a deportation camp. “The Islamic Republic must have informants in Turkish immigration offices. Otherwise, how would I have ended up in a deportation camp, right after reporting what happened about that night,” she said.
In the camp, Nazemi said the guards beat her, pulling out half of her hair. Another Iranian migrant, who was also detained, accused her of being transgender and threw soup in her face. Nazemi said she had to disrobe in front of the other detainees to prove she was a biological woman to prevent more abuse. She said the camp almost broke her. She had medication with her and one day she took a lot of pills at once. “I didn’t take them to die, actually, but to prove something, how badly they treated us that it got me to this point,” Nazemi said. Nazemi was hospitalized outside the camp, doctors pumped her stomach and she recovered. Police released her and she returned to Isparta and appealed the deportation. Turkey denied the appeal again, but by this time Nazemi’s story was out in the Western press.
The World shared her story, along with press coverage she received in the French newspaper Le Monde — that attention helped her get a visa to France after eight years of being stuck in the Turkish asylum system. She resettled in a French village in December 2023, and continued her activism — Nazemi has expanded her cause to advocate for Afghan migrants as well.
She still gets death threats on social media. Many of the senders say they are the “soldiers of the Islamic Republic.” The direct messages in her inbox on Instagram threaten her with execution, drowning, even rape. Nazemi is under French police protection and reports all the threats.
On 14 November 2025 Kate Kroeger and Kellea Miller wrote for the Alliance blog how philanthropy can show up in solidarity with movements defending democracy
There is a nearly six-fold increase in the chance of protecting societies from democratic backsliding when strong civil resistance campaigns are involved.
This striking finding from the University of Texas at Dallas and Johns Hopkins University—that social movements and resistance campaigns can increase the likelihood of protecting democracy to 51.7 percent from 7.5 percent—should compel funders to action, especially in this moment of rising authoritarianism around the world.
The philanthropic sector faces both an unprecedented opportunity and a moral imperative: to invest in the proven strategies that can safeguard democracy and our future, including the future of our planet. Yet, progressive movements leading civil resistance to authoritarianism, particularly grassroots organisations, remain chronically underfunded and the organisers, activists, and movements at the forefronts of this work during an era of overlapping crises are working with minimal resources while confronting burnout, reprisals, and trauma.
In order to be part of the solution, we must first clarify who and what we’re investing in. New research from Human Rights Funders Network projects that human rights-focused ODA will decline by up to $1.9 billion or 31 percent annually by 2026. By investing in grassroots organisations—including unregistered efforts—that focus on structurally excluded populations, philanthropy can stave off the worst outcomes of the funding crisis. The frontline movements and communities bearing the brunt of and addressing authoritarianism and climate change are not merely beneficiaries or recipients of aid. They are the leaders and strategists philanthropy can support and learn from. We cannot forget that it’s Indigenous communities who protect the majority of our planet’s biodiversity and lead the resistance to fossil fuel expansion thereby being one of the largest forces to combat climate chaos. Grassroots communities also grow the majority of the world’s food grown with agroecological methods. It’s relationship-building by movements that is key to shifting pillar loyalty to defend democracy. These are rooted, place-based, local innovations and solutions that have deep breadth and experience and can drive the systemic change our world desperately needs.
To address the breadth of crises we’re facing, philanthropy must act as an ecosystem and fund ecosystems. Now is the time to fund movements within communities, in networks and ecosystems with one another. It’s not about one issue or one community, but about ensuring that democratic resistance is funded at every level. In order to do so, philanthropy must demonstrate collective action instead of operating in siloed strategies. There are powerful examples of philanthropy coming together to address crises in recent memory, including during the peak of the Covid pandemic and in response to the invasion of Ukraine, that can be replicated. For example, in response to the pandemic, philanthropy was not only able to invest more than $20 billion dollars in communities around the world, but also effectively act as a convener for information sharing and to foster collaboration across governmental and private sector stakeholders. Funding social movement ecosystems is also a risk mitigation strategy, ensuring that risk is spread across groups both for funders and movements.
Realistic risk assessment and mitigation strategies allow philanthropy to act with courage. Philanthropic institutions must clearly identify the real risks facing them and prepare to address them in order to step up in this moment. While there are risks facing private foundations, including but not limited to being questioned by governmental entities about their grantmaking, many of these risks are short term and administrative and can be mitigated through, among other strategies, working in tandem with other funders. For movements, however, the risks are existential. Movements for climate and environmental justice are among the most targeted in the world, because they take on corporate interests, agribusiness, extractive industries, and organised crime. In 2024 alone, more than 320 human rights defenders were killed. Fully 85 percent of targeted killings of activists in Latin America are those of environmental and climate justice defenders. It is true that funders need to move cautiously to preserve their ability to fund these very movements and activists on the frontlines, but they must not confuse caution with abandoning those risking their lives to protect our planet and fight for human rights for all.
How philanthropy supports those defending democracy at the ground level is as important as the dollar amounts. If funders were waiting for an emergency moment to throw away their playbook and fund with trust and abundance, we have arrived at that moment. Long, arduous, and bureaucratic systems and processes for grantmaking are not designed to meet the moment of poly crisis we’re in. Funders can use this moment to redesign their processes to meet not only the needs of movements but the complexity and pace of current crises. It’s essential that donors normalise long-term, unrestricted funding, resource movement infrastructure, and support collective care for activists on the frontlines. Legal defense, digital security, crisis communications, media trainings, and spaces for defenders to build intersectional and shared strategies require resources in order for movements to survive and succeed. Defenders are operating under extremely risky conditions with bare bones support, while fighting burnout and reprisals. Investing in collective care, such as wellbeing spaces, health insurance, retirement, and transition funds, is as important for the survival of movements as infrastructure support.
Over the past few months, there have been numerous convenings and conversations on what philanthropy should do in the current political and funding landscape. The answer is clear. Philanthropy should invest in strategies that succeed in protecting democracy and our planet and time and time again, we’ve seen that those are led by grassroots and frontline activists and movements. These movements will continue to exist whether funders step up or not. The question, in the words of activist and former Co-Executive Director of Highlander Center Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson, is whether they’ll be resourced to win.
Kate Kroeger is the executive director of Urgent Action Fund for Feminist Activism. Kellea Miller is the executive director of Human Rights Funders Network. Samir Doshi is director of Just Transitions at CS Fund.
Cyrille Traoré Ndembi, 61, is the President of the Vindoulou Residents’ Collective, a neighbourhood on the outskirts of Pointe-Noire in the Republic of Congo. This retired community development specialist has been fighting to defend the residents’ right to a healthy environment since he moved there in 2019.
His house is located just ten metres from the Metssa Congo plant run by a subsidiary of the India-based Metssa Group. This recycling plant produced lead bars for export from 2013 to 2024, 50 metres from a school and in the middle of a residential area. Cyrille noticed severe health problems in his family including respiratory and digestive disorders. Blood tests on some residents showed lead levels far above the alert level set by the WHO.
Following Cyrille’s campaigning, and with the help of Amnesty International, the authorities ordered the plant’s closure in December 2024. Cyrille continues to fight for justice for his community.
“When I arrived in Vindoulou, I quickly realized the danger we were in. The air was unbreathable!
Black dust and fumes were spreading and invading our homes. Sometimes, when we went out, we couldn’t even see our nearest neighbour. The plant staff discharged oil and wastewater in front of our houses. Metal debris from the plant’s chimney fell onto our roofs. Once, I went to walk along the wall of the plant and debris fell on me like hail.
Right from the start, I had doubts about the legality of this activity in the middle of a populated area. I couldn’t understand how a substance as dangerous as lead could be recycled using processes that were, in my view, contrary to the standards and regulations in force.
‘My whole family was ill’
We arrived in Vindoulou in August 2019 and by January 2020 my whole family was ill. Our children were found to have the beginnings of pneumonia, bronchitis and bronchopneumonia. We also had diarrhoea and abdominal pains.
Across the neighbourhood, people had the same problems. I was told that the children who had moved away from Vindoulou no longer suffered from those symptoms.
The residents believed that nothing could make this company leave. For the community, it was David against Goliath. Some even called me King David.
I went door-to-door to convince people that something serious was going on. Everywhere I went, I reminded people of article 41 of our Constitution: every citizen has the right to live in a healthy environment.
I explained to people the benefits of getting organized together and taking up the fight. Today, our collective has over a hundred members.
From survivor to human rights defender
We tried to meet the directors of Metssa Congo. We met the plant’s manager, who said he was not authorized to comment on the subject. He promised us an audience with the CEO, but it never took place. They wouldn’t talk to us, simply saying that they had authorization to operate. We couldn’t even consult their environmental impact report, which is a document that we were entitled to access under the current legislation. After calling in a bailiff, I was finally able to consult another type of document, their environmental audit report produced after they had already begun operations.
In 2022, I went to meet Amnesty International’s representatives to alert them. From 2023 onwards, Amnesty investigated and provided funds to carry out blood tests on a sample of the population. We then had proof that people tested had high levels of lead in their blood.
At the time, the workers were against what I was doing. Now, most of them have joined us in our fight.Cyrille Traoré Ndembi
I took two blood tests, in March and September 2023. They showed blood lead levels above 400 µg/L. For the 17 other people tested, the levels were alarming. When the ministry carried out other tests in 2024, some ex-workers had levels of 1,000 µg/L – that’s enormous!
My youngest daughter just turned four. Of the nine children tested, she had the highest lead level, above 530 µg/L. I’m worried about her. She’s running fevers even though she has no infection.
Amnesty also helped us take legal action in 2023, to publicize our situation and, in the face of the administration’s inaction, to make a plea to the authorities. As a result, the minister [of Environment] came here and spoke to the population in December 2024. We as a collective did not have a formal audience with the minister. The authorities received Metssa Congo’s managers for an audience in Brazzaville [the Republic of Congo’s capital] several times, but never our collective! I’m not being heard. Ideally, we should be able to talk directly to the authorities.
I’ve been under pressure. Metssa filed a complaint against me alleging defamation in May 2024. I went to court, but Metssa didn’t show up. They were bolstered by the decision of the Supreme Court’s public prosecutor that allowed them to resume their activities after a suspension ordered by an administrative judge in April 2024.
One night, some young people came and threatened me. It was stressful, but I didn’t back down. At the time, the workers were against what I was doing. Now, most of them have joined us in our fight.
When the company’s operations were suspended again in June 2024 by the Ministry of Environment, we continued to fight because the word suspension meant nothing to us. We wanted to hear the word closure. When the decision was taken on 11 December 2024 to close and dismantle the plant, we were relieved, but the fight was far from over.
On 12 December 2025, the government of Guatemala formally acknowledged responsibility for the 1989 enforced disappearance of human rights defenders Agapito Pérez Lucas, Nicolás Mateo, Macario Pú Chivalán, and Luis Ruiz Luis, whose whereabouts remain unknown to this day. President Bernardo Arévalo will join the victims’ families, representatives from the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center (Kennedy Human Rights) and Consejo de Comunidades Étnicas Runujel Junam (CERJ), state officials, and special guests for a public Act of Recognition of Responsibility ceremony at the Palacio de la Cultura in Guatemala City.
Pérez Lucas, Mateo, Pú Chivalán, and Ruiz Luis were active members of CERJ during the armed conflict in Guatemala, helping protect rural Guatemalans from unlawful conscription into the army. Targeted for their human rights work, the four defenders were subjected to threats and persecution, which ultimately culminated in their arbitrary detention and forced disappearance by members of the Guatemalan Army. Despite repeated pleas from their families, the Guatemalan government failed to conduct an effective investigation or provide information about their whereabouts.
“For decades, the families of the disappeared lived with silence, fear, and impunity,” said Kerry Kennedy, president of Kennedy Human Rights. “The State’s failure to investigate and respond not only deepened the pain of those who lost loved ones, but it denied entire communities the right to truth, justice, and memory. This public recognition of responsibility is therefore not simply a symbolic act. It is the State’s formal acknowledgment, before its people and before the world, of the grave human rights violations committed against these communities.”
In September 2024, after years of litigation by CERJ and Kennedy Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) concluded that the Guatemalan government was responsible for forcibly disappearing the four defenders in direct retaliation for their human rights work, failing to search for the defenders’ whereabouts, and failing to investigate the facts. As part of its verdict, the Court ordered Guatemala to uphold several reparation measures in favor of the victims, including a thorough investigation of the disappearances. The Court also ordered the Guatemalan government to implement a series of non-repetition measures, including declassifying archives related to the internal armed conflict and creating a national mechanism to search for forcibly disappeared individuals. It also ordered the State to adopt a public policy to protect human rights defenders. In response to this Court order, the Government recently announced the adoption of such a policy for the period 2025-2035.
In a Q&A on 16 April 2026 with Abdulhakim Idris, head of the Center for Uyghur Studies, Freedom Housediscusses his work exposing the Chinese Communist Party’s repression and how Chinese authorities have menaced him and his family in an attempt to prevent him from speaking out. Here some excerpts:
Abdulhakim Idris (Photo Credit: Center for Uyghur Studies)
The People’s Republic of China conducts the world’s most sophisticated and comprehensive campaign of transnational repression, targeting human rights defenders, journalists, students, artists, and members of religious and ethnic minorities. Uyghurs, an ethnic group from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, have fled repression in China for decades. Abroad, many members of the group face the threat of transnational repression via detention, unlawful deportation, rendition, coercion by proxy, surveillance, and digital harassment. Uyghur individuals are involved in over 20 percent of the incidents in Freedom House’s transnational repression database, which catalogues direct, physical cases around the world from 2014 to 2025.
Last month, Abdulhakim Idris, head of the Center for Uyghur Studies in Washington, DC, and a leading Uyghur scholar and advocate, was detained for nearly a day and subsequently expelled from Malaysia at the behest of Chinese authorities, preventing him from launching the Malay-language edition of his book about how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) pressures governments in the Islamic world to remain silent about its persecution of Uyghurs. As Idris explains, this act of transnational repression sets a dangerous precedent for every other American advocate, journalist, and researcher operating abroad. Below, Idris describes his work exposing CCP abuses, and how they sought to silence him—in Malaysia and elsewhere.
Freedom House: Could you describe your work as executive director of the Center for Uyghur Studies?
Abdulhakim Idris: As executive director of the Center for Uyghur Studies (CUS), I lead a mission at the intersection of human rights advocacy, academic research, and diplomatic engagement to address the crisis in East Turkistan (known formally as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region). By producing rigorous, evidence-based reports and briefing global lawmakers, I work to expose Chinese Communist Party narratives and ensure the international conversation on its persecution of Uyghurs remains rooted in scholarly data and cultural expertise. My work translates this research into action, raising awareness through media advocacy and high-level briefings to reach the audiences most capable of effectuating change. I also work to engage Muslim-majority countries where Chinese economic pressure often buys silence. By briefing religious leaders and civil society across the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, I demonstrate that the persecution of Uyghurs is an assault on our shared faith and part of China’s war on religious beliefs.
My advocacy is deeply personal: 24 of my family members have been missing since 2017, including my mother, Habibehan Idris; my brother Abdurehim; my sister Buhedichehan; and all of my nieces and nephews. In August 2023, I learned about my father’s passing in Hotan seven months earlier in January 2023.
As a bridge between the diaspora and the international community, I provide the strategic recommendations and testimony needed to transform our personal data into global action.
How long have you been involved in advocacy on behalf of the Uyghur people?
I was born in Hotan, East Turkistan, in 1968. My journey began with a foundation in faith and scholarship; I studied Islamic Sciences and Arabic in underground madrasas in Hotan before leaving in 1986 to study at Al-Azhar University in Egypt. This background gave me a profound understanding of the religious identity that the CCP is currently attempting to erase.
In 1990, I became one of the first Uyghurs to seek asylum in Germany. Settling in Munich, I balanced my studies in Industrial Management with a mission to organize our people. I am one of the founders of the East Turkistan Union in Europe (1991), the very first Uyghur organization on the continent. Over the next two decades, I focused on building the institutional architecture of our struggle. I am proud to be one of the founders of both the World Uyghur Youth Congress (1996), where I served as chairman of the executive committee, and the World Uyghur Congress (2004), where I have held different leadership roles.
Since moving to the United States in 2009, I have continued this work in Washington, DC, serving on the board of the Uyghur American Association. In 2017, my wife, Rushan Abbas, and I cofounded Campaign for Uyghurs (CFU) to bring more urgent awareness to CCP abuses against Uyghurs.
In recent years, the nature of the struggle has changed. As the Chinese government intensified its repression campaign, our response needed to become more robust. This led me to establish the Center for Uyghur Studies, where I have combined advocacy with the intellectual and scholarly dimension necessary to challenge China’s influence, particularly in the Muslim-majority countries.
Why were you traveling to Malaysia? Can you describe what happened when you arrived?
We have been engaging in Uyghur advocacy in Malaysia since 2022, and since then, I have been there several times, including for a meeting with Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.
The CCP considers me one of the foremost experts on its influence in Muslim-majority countries. My book is now translated into Turkish, Arabic, Malay, and Bahasa Indonesia. It has been an eye-opener about Chinese infiltration into Muslim-majority countries. Following its publication, both my wife and I were subjected to coordinated death threats and digital harassment. When I traveled to Jakarta for the Indonesian launch of the book, the Chinese embassy mobilized local proxies to stage public protests, including the burning of my picture and copies of my book.
Our Malaysian partner planned this advocacy trip and invited me to join. We were well prepared with reports and planned to launch the Malay-language edition of my book alongside several new reports from the Center for Uyghur Studies. My arrival in Kuala Lumpur was on March 29, 2026, and my departure was scheduled for April 8, 2026.
I arrived in Kuala Lumpur on March 29 at 7:00 am local time. When I came to the immigration hall, a Malaysian immigration officer pulled me aside, took my passport, and brought me to his office. An officer introduced himself as a Royal Malaysia Police officer and said that I would be denied entry and be deported. Five hours into this conversation, they put me in a temporary detention center at the airport. [Note: US citizens are not required to apply for a visa for a business or tourism stay in Malaysia of less than 90 days.]
My US passport was seized, and I was held without justification for 21 hours in detention, given only one small meal and one small bottle of water, before being escorted by four police officers onto a deportation flight.
After approximately 70 hours of continuous travel and detention, I arrived safely back in the United States. Our partner in Kuala Lumpur confirmed to me that my denied entry was the result of pressure directly from Beijing.
This is not an isolated incident but a pattern of Chinese intimidation. Last year, I was similarly denied entry to Indonesia under pressure from the Chinese embassy in Jakarta, but that time, after intervention by the US government, I was able to secure entry. This time, despite the State Department and the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur escalating the matter to Malaysian immigration, Beijing prevailed. The escalation is alarming.
Beijing’s goal is to silence my research before it reaches Malay-speaking communities. My only “crime” is being a dissident from a community persecuted by the Chinese government and exposing China’s broader threats to humanity, freedom, and democracy. China has now successfully used a third country to detain and expel a US citizen. If this stands, it sets a dangerous precedent for every American advocate, journalist, and researcher operating abroad. This is a clear case of Chinese transnational repression, specifically targeting me as a US citizen.
Has anything like this happened before?
Yes. We held an advocacy trip to Indonesia between July 11, 2024, and July 20, 2024. Our partner in Indonesia organized the events and invited me. The trip involved multiple meetings, seminars, and roundtable discussions with key Indonesian stakeholders, including politicians, NGO leaders, and religious figures. In total, we visited and held activities in five cities, including Jakarta, Pontianak, Surabaya, Yogyakarta, and remotely in Medan.
There were several challenges we faced during this trip. The CCP propaganda campaign is now widespread across Indonesia, including among NGOs and social media platforms such as TikTok, X, and Facebook. The Chinese government’s extensive propaganda campaigns, including social media advertisements and influence on local leaders, have created a significant hurdle.
When we held our event in Pontianak, Indonesian immigration officials showed up, checked my visa, and told me I was not allowed to speak at events on a tourist visa and that I would need a C10 visa for that purpose. We then changed our approach: I gave all my presentations to our Indonesian partners, who then proceeded with the seminars. We could adapt because our Indonesian colleagues were trained and experienced on the Uyghur issue after two years of working together.
On a subsequent trip between April 26, 2025, and May 6, 2025 to Indonesia, I traveled on a speaker visa and was detained at the airport for three hours before being allowed to enter the country after the intervention of the US government.
In both cases, as in Malaysia, the pressure traced back to Beijing. The difference is that in Indonesia, I was eventually able to seek clarity and secure entry. In Malaysia, I was not.
Have you ever experienced any other forms of transnational repression, such as threats, harassment, or coercion of your family?
Transnational repression is not an abstract concept for me. It is a painful, daily reality that has fundamentally reshaped my family’s life. The Chinese government frequently uses the safety and freedom of our loved ones back home as leverage to silence our advocacy in the West. Since repression of Uyghurs has intensified deeply since 2017, I have lost all contact with my relatives in Hotan. In Uyghur culture, family is everything. Being severed from one’s roots is a form of psychological warfare.
In August 2023, I received a devastating message from an anonymous source. I was informed that my father, Abdulkarim Zikrullah Idris, had passed away seven months earlier, in January 2023, in our hometown of Hotan. Because the CCP has cut all lines of communication between the diaspora and our families in East Turkistan, I was not able to be with him, speak to him, or even know he was gone when it happened. The last time I heard my father’s voice was in April 2017. Shortly after that phone call, the mass detentions began, and contact was severed entirely. For six years, I lived with the agonizing uncertainty of not knowing if he was safe, if he was in a camp, or if he was even alive.
This is a form of psychological torture that hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs in the diaspora face every day. Because of the total lack of transparency in the region, the exact circumstances of his death remain unclear. We do not know if he had access to medical care, or if the stress of the ongoing persecution contributed to his passing. What we do know is that he died in a police-state environment where his children were unable to fulfill their final duties to him.
My family was not the only one targeted. In September 2018, just six days after my wife Rushan Abbas spoke publicly about my families’ disappearance while highlighting the Chinese government’s mass detention of Uyghurs, her sister Dr. Gulshan Abbas was forcibly disappeared from her home in Urumqi. The spokesperson of China’s Foreign Ministry officially confirmed on December 31, 2020, that she had been sentenced to 20 years in prison on baseless charges in connection with terrorism. Dr. Gulshan Abbas was a retired medical doctor who had never been involved in politics. Her imprisonment remains an act of transnational repression, intended to terrorize our family, silence us, and force us to stop advocating for our people.
The CCP’s tactics of transnational repression have taken other forms as well. After I gave testimony before the Uyghur Tribunal in London in 2021, which concluded that China was committing crimes against humanity against the Uyghur people, Chinese state television broadcast my photograph and denounced me for testifying. This was meant to intimidate me publicly and to warn others of the consequences of speaking the truth. Before the 2024 General Assembly of the World Uyghur Congress in Sarajevo, my wife and I received an online video message containing direct death threats. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) contacted me and confirmed they were aware of the threat.
We have become targets of dehumanization, smear campaigns, character assassination, and threats against our lives. Even outside China, we live under constant fear and intimidation. Through these tactics, the Chinese government seeks not only to punish individuals but to spread fear across entire families and communities.
On 25 April 2026 ANI reported on a project aimed at strengthening human rights advocacy across Pakistan. Titled ‘Human Rights Documentation, Fact-Finding, and Advocacy for the Marginalised-II,’ the initiative seeks to advance human rights, democratic values, and the rule of law, according to an official statement. The event brought together members of the Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) Network, including civil society representatives, community leaders, and activists. Participants discussed the project’s goals, strategies, and anticipated impact.
The session focused on planning key activities under the project, defining roles and responsibilities, and identifying practical interventions to ensure effective outcomes. Attendees also shared field experiences, highlighted challenges, and explored ways to address them during implementation.
HRFP, in collaboration with TFD and the HRDs Network, plans to hold monthly meetings to review progress, share case updates, and tackle emerging challenges. These regular engagements will also facilitate legal assistance, address urgent needs, and strengthen advocacy efforts to ensure justice for affected individuals and communities.
Cases requiring in-depth inquiry will be examined through dedicated fact-finding missions conducted by trained teams of volunteers, staff, and network members. The project will also include capacity-building initiatives and awareness sessions to enhance advocacy skills and knowledge….
Naveed Walter reiterated that the project is designed to uphold fundamental rights, protect vulnerable populations, and advocate for freedoms such as expression, religion, and equal access to opportunities, education, and a healthy environment. He also stressed the importance of accountability and the fulfilment of basic human needs.
Members of the HRDs Network, including Naseem Haroon, Nusrat Samuel, John Victor, Ejaz Ghauri, James Lal, Lawrance Thomas, and Sohail Emmanuel, expressed their commitment to collaborative action. They emphasised the need to strengthen democratic practices and condemned human rights violations and undemocratic tendencies that undermine the rule of law.
In 2025, REAT Helpline recorded above 1200 and in 2024, 1198 complaints related to human rights violations, with a particular focus on issues concerning religion, belief, and democratic freedoms.
Applications are now open for the 2027 Marianne Initiative for Human Rights Defenders. Each year, a group of about fifteen human rights defenders, distinguished by their exemplary work in the fight for fundamental rights in their countries of origin, are welcomed to France. The laureates are selected from among several hundred candidates by a committee of independent experts.
The personalized program includes networking with key actors involved in the field of human rights (State, local authorities, non-governmental organizations, independent judicial and administrative authorities, representatives of international organizations), as well as support for the development of their activist project, aimed at strengthening the effectiveness of their action.
Benefits
The program offers a unique platform for international exposure and professional growth.
Participants gain access to a broad network of human rights professionals and European institutions, fostering connections that last long after the program ends.
The core benefit of the initiative lies in the specialized skill-building workshops provided during the stay in France.
This immersive experience aims to expand the operational capacity and strategic networks of frontline defenders.
Eligibility
To be eligible, candidates must demonstrate a proven and distinguished commitment to promoting fundamental rights within their local communities.
The initiative specifically looks for individuals who have already distinguished themselves through concrete actions on the ground.
Prospective applicants should be motivated to expand their professional skills and be willing to collaborate with international peers.
The program serves as a vital bridge between local grassroots activism and global human rights standards.
Benefits
The winners follow a comprehensive program consisting of:
Training courses to strengthen cross-cutting skills to implement their projects: negotiation, leadership, advocacy, project engineering, association management, etc.;
Training to improve working conditions in the country of origin: security, mechanisms for the protection of human rights defenders, etc.;
Courses to consolidate their theoretical knowledge: transitional justice, international law, etc.;
Meetings and networking with individuals and partner organizations committed to human rights and development issues;
Conferences and cultural activities;
Individual interviews to support the activist project;
Visits to international institutions and organizations;
Exchanges with the Marianne Alumni network of the program, within the framework of the mentoring program between laureates of the different cohorts.
On 20 April 2026, DW has awarded its 12th Freedom of Speech Award to Jimmy Lai. A prominent advocate for press freedom & democracy in Hong Kong, the founder of the Apple Daily newspaper has been detained in solitary confinement since 2020.
Image: Anthony Wallace/AFP
On honoring Jimmy Lai, DW Director General Barbara Massing said: “Jimmy Lai has stood unwaveringly for press freedom in Hong Kong at great personal risk, even as space for independent journalism became increasingly limited. With Apple Daily, he gave journalists a platform for free reporting and a voice to the democracy movement in Hong Kong. His commitment reminds us that press freedom is never a given – it must be constantly defended. With the DW Freedom of Speech Award, we honour his indispensable dedication to democratic values.”
The DW Freedom of Speech Award will be presented on June 23, 2026, at the DW Global Media Forum, DW’s international media conference, in Bonn.
Jimmy Lai was born in southern China in 1947 and, as a young child, fled to Hong Kong in 1960. The British citizen founded the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily in 1995 and later became one of the city’s most prominent advocates for democracy, financially supporting democratic parties and politicians and taking part in the mass protests of 2019 and 2020. Following the introduction of China’s national security law in Hong Kong in June 2020, Lai was later arrested and has remained in custody, and in prolonged solitary confinement, since December 2020. Regardless of his British citizenship, the Hong Kong authorities continue to deny the United Kingdom consular access to him.
In early 2026, a Hong Kong court sentenced Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison. He had been convicted in December 2025, following a two-year trial, on charges including “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces” and conspiracy to publish “seditious material.”
“One of the reasons why they put you in solitary confinement, of which my father has been for more than five years now, is to tell you that nobody cares about you, that you’re going to die alone. And all the support and this award show that that is not the case. That people who fight for freedom, people who fight for the freedom of others, are never alone,” Jimmy Lai’s son Sebastien told DW in an exclusive interview.
On 23 April 2026 Anamaría Martinez and Elizabeth Moses for WRI explain how environmental defenders help prevent deforestation and protect ecosystems critical to climate stability. Yet many face severe and sometimes lethal threats while remaining underrecognized in climate policies that often depend on their work but fail to protect them.
Image by VaLife/Shutterstock
Benitha Bompendju grew up in Tshuapa province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, surrounded by the dense rainforests of the Congo Basin. The world’s second-largest tropical forest, it plays a critical role in regulating the global climate, conserving biodiversity and sustaining local communities like Benitha’s. Yet when she was growing up, industrial logging was constant.
Concessionaires licensed by the government to harvest timber promised to bring benefits like schools and health centers. But these projects often did not materialize, and local authorities rarely got involved. Instead, companies stripped trees from the land and left local communities — who have long stewarded and relied on the rainforest — with little in return.
“As children, we watched the concessionaires leave with the wood and our parents received nothing,” Benitha recalls. “That was injustice.” This experience shaped Benitha’s future work. In 2016, she began monitoring forest-use contracts and documenting violations, working with partner organizations and government agencies to hold violators accountable. Since then, these joint efforts have helped curb illegal logging, enforce environmental regulations and deliver promised investments to communities.
Yet this critical work can be dangerous — lethally so. Benitha and other environmental defenders like her are often caught in the crosshairs of commercial interests and corruption. Many face threats, intimidation, physical assault, kidnapping and deadly violence. Global Witness documented 146 defenders killed or missing in 2024. The total number killed or missing from 2012 to 2024 is over 2,200 — and because many cases go unreported, the true toll is likely higher.
Research consistently shows that forests managed by Indigenous Peoples and local communities have lower deforestation rates and greater carbon sequestration than those managed under other regimes, making their contribution a measurable climate outcome. But without necessary protections — from access to climate justice to the systems and law enforcement needed to prevent threats and tragic loss of life — environmental defenders can’t safeguard vital ecosystems. And such protections can’t materialize or become institutionalized if environmental defenders aren’t accurately recognized and reflected in climate and nature policies.
The UN defines environmental human rights defenders as “individuals and groups who, in their personal or professional capacity and in a peaceful manner, strive to protect and promote human rights relating to the environment, including water, air, land, flora and fauna.” This includes those who defend the collective right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment, as well as traditional lands and livelihoods, through actions ranging from community organizing and legal advocacy to protesting, public campaigning and journalism. Many come from Indigenous and tribal groups with deep ancestral ties to the land.
Our research focuses specifically on frontline environmental defenders — those who live in, and defend, resource-rich areas experiencing what the UN Environment Programme describes as “abuse of environmental rights which affects a growing number of people in many parts of the world.”
To understand how defenders are represented in the gray (unpublished) and peer-reviewed literature on climate change under the UNFCCC, we examined 170 peer-reviewed documents from 2015 to 2025, including journal articles, books and reports, to map how defenders’ actions and contributions are reflected. The literature we surveyed both reflects trends in policymaking and serves as a source decision-makers might draw on to develop global and national climate and nature policies. Download
We found that groups such as Indigenous Peoples, women, local communities and youth are increasingly acknowledged as “agents of change” with decision-making capacity, rather than portrayed as victims or passive recipients of project benefits.
However, only 5% of the literature explicitly identifies members of these groups as “defenders” working to protect ecosystems and resources. This represents a crucial gap. Climate literature (and wider climate governance frameworks) tends to recognize who these people are — such as Indigenous Peoples, women-led organizations and youth activists — but without recognizing what they do, such as monitor deforestation and challenge extractive industries, or the risks they face as a result.
This difference may seem subtle, but is crucial. Recognizing someone’s identity alone doesn’t necessarily translate into protection or funding for the stewardship and advocacy these groups engage in. Not all identity groups (for example, Indigenous Peoples) are environmental defenders, and not all defenders belong to these groups, even if there is often an overlap. Recognizing defenders’ on the ground contributions, on the other hand, is important because it highlights their role in delivering concrete climate actions — and the need for institutional support and protection, not just their inclusion as stakeholders.
Protection can include early-warning and rapid-response systems that trigger protective action when defenders report threats or surveillance. It also means access to legal aid and judicial remedies, such as fast-track investigations, special counsel and public defenders trained in environmental and land-rights cases.
Meanwhile, governments are missing out on more effective and equitable climate solutions. Defenders bring unique perspectives, knowledge and lived experience — from agroforestry practices rooted in local traditions to stronger data collection and monitoring for more accurate NDC reporting — and help ensure policies are carried out more effectively. Yet threats to defenders weaken both national and global climate action by deterring those who risk their lives to safeguard ecosystems and enforce laws and policies.
What Would It Take to Support Environmental Defenders?
Frameworks like the Paris Agreement and the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform (LCIPP) under the UNFCCC already aim to integrate rights-based climate action into national and global goals. But they lack clear definitions and guidance on how defenders should be recognized and supported. To truly support environmental defenders, they must be incorporated into climate policy, reporting and finance.
Here are three ways this can happen:
1) Defining ‘Defenders’
The first step is defining what defenders are — not by identities, but by the concrete actions they take for climate protection and community resilience. Many don’t self-identify as “defenders.” They are individuals and communities that contribute to climate action and environmental protection. This would capture these de facto roles.
Adopting a practice-based definition in national and multilateral policymaking, alongside indicators that track defenders’ contributions to climate action, would allow policymakers to systematically recognize the people protecting ecosystems on the ground. Indicators could include community monitoring results, forest protection metrics or the number of co-designed adaptation plans.
This formalization would have three practical implications: First, recognizing defenders as a group would allow implementation of protection measures by identifying and addressing the risks they take. Second, it could enable governments to allocate budget to support defender-led initiatives. Third, it could strengthen their participation in decision-making at national and international levels by giving them space to share their knowledge on climate action and local ecosystems.
2) Protecting Defenders
Without safety guarantees, defenders cannot participate or contribute effectively. Protection requires two key elements: physical safety and legal resources.
Physical safety includes strengthening safeguards to reduce social and environmental risks and exploitation, for example, when concessionaires undertake projects in resource-rich areas. One way this can be supported is by creating early warning systems that allow defenders to report threats to the authorities and receive support, ensuring formal grievance mechanisms exist to ensure defender safety (with international backing, if needed). Another is by integrating defender protection requirements into climate funding, including zero-tolerance policies for violent reprisals.
Legal protection includes access to resources and courts. However, many defenders lack access due to prohibitive costs, limited connections and a poor understanding of the system. Where corruption is entrenched and governance weak, domestic legal systems can be used against defenders, leading to their criminalization as a way to silence them and stop their work. International accountability mechanisms — including UN human rights bodies, transnational legal networks and climate finance conditions tied to defender safety — can create external pressure where national systems fail. But they can only function if defenders are formally recognized. Without this, accountability is nearly impossible to demand.
Some progress has been made in different parts of the world. The Aarhus Convention, adopted in 1998, requires parties to “ensure that individuals exercising their rights to environmental information, participation and justice are not penalized, persecuted or harassed.” And Article 9 of the Escazú Agreement, adopted in 2018, calls for “a safe and enabling environment for persons, groups and organizations that promote and defend human rights in environmental matters.”
At the national level, climate justice laws and policies in Colombia, Mexico, Indonesia and the Philippines enshrine protection mechanisms that cover defenders and their work, while aiming to provide access to legal support.
Environmental defenders can include anyone that protects human rights related to the environment, including rights to a safe, clean and sustainable environment. They often face threats to their well-being and lack access to legal systems that could help support them. Photo by Eric Isselee/Shutterstock
However, significant implementation gaps remain.
Colombia’s law has stalled due to limited accessibility, the absence of a clear definition of who constitutes a human rights defender and a reshuffling of funds during the COVID-19 pandemic. In Mexico, a backlog caused in part by insufficient staffing prevents cases from being addressed in a timely manner, and protection measures are not always adequately implemented.
Indonesia recognizes defenders explicitly, but in practice, continued criminalization and intimidation prevent them from accessing the legal protection the mechanism provides. In the Philippines, financial and cultural barriers to filing cases, limited legal knowledge among defenders and slow processing times hinder the widespread implementation of legal framework protecting them.
Yet when defenders can access justice, legal action can drive accountability and tangible outcomes. In 2018, 25 Colombian youth aged seven to 26 years old filed a lawsuit against the government, alleging that climate change and failure to reduce deforestation threatened their fundamental rights. While a lower court initially ruled against them, Colombia’s Supreme Court overturned the decision and ordered the government to devise and implement action plans to address deforestation in the Amazon.
Defenders need legal support and safe, inclusive access to the processes behind these laws and regulations. Rights-based climate cases and stronger rule of law systems provide essential recourse when other accountability channels fail.
3) Integrating Defenders into Climate Plans
Protecting Defenders Is Essential for Climate Action
Protecting environmental defenders is a question of safeguarding human rights and life, ensuring climate justice and strengthening climate action.
People like Benitha, who put their lives on the line to defend the forests and other ecosystems that sustain them and the world, should not face these high-stake risks alone. Governments, multilateral institutions and finance bodies share the responsibility of formally recognizing and protecting environmental defenders within climate, nature and other policies.
Doing so is a matter of equity — and a climate imperative. When defenders are safe and supported, forests stay standing, emissions stay out of the atmosphere and frontline communities can continue building resilience for their own futures and the world’s.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 