The Epoch Times on 15 March refers to “In the Name of ‘Stability”, the 2012 annual report by Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRC) which shows that rights defenders have managed to expand their footholds and influence, despite intensified suppression by the regime’s vast apparatus destined for “stability maintenance”. It states that human rights defenders in China have adopted new advocacy strategies in their campaigns for increased liberties. The Internet generally, and especially the Weibo, or microblogging, platforms, have proven to be powerful tools for exposing official corruption and agitating for greater rights.
The usual forms of harassment were in place, but with more than double 2011’s cases of “soft detention,” “residential surveillance,” and “enforced disappearance,” arbitrary forms of punishment that have now been codified in law. However, fewer officials sentenced rights defenders to re-education through labor (RTL), and the regime has made promissory remarks that it intends to abolish this extrajudicial system. Chinese police have also adopted “movement management and control,” a fairly new cyber-surveillance system, for monitoring individuals, events, and groups. AIDS awareness group Aizhixing said in a recent report that police can now target anyone believed to pose a threat to “social order,” with the potential for far-reaching human rights infringements. Read the rest of this entry »
The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) presented an oral intervention before the Human Rights Council on 12 March, 2013, in which it expressed its concerns over the continued deterioration in the situation of human rights in Egypt since President Mohamed Morsi took power. The oral intervention was based on the assessment of members of the Egyptian NGO Forum, a collective of 23 independent human rights organizations in Egypt, on the situation of human rights in Egypt during the first 8 months of Morsi’s presidency. It asserted that three major rights-related crises have been seen over this period: undermining of the independence of the judiciary, violations to the right to free expression and media freedoms, and violations to the right to assembly and peaceful protest. http://www.cihrs.org/?p=6159&lang=en
In addition, CIHRS organized a side event at the HRC, on 11 March, featuring representatives of the Egyptian NGO Forum, including Mohammed Zaree, director of the Egypt Roadmap Program at CIHRS, Masa Amir, researcher at Nazra for Feminist Studies, and Nihad Abboud, from the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression. The event was chaired by Ziad Abdel Tawab, deputy director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies. He expressed concern for an independent civil society in Egypt, referring to recent attempts by the current government to put in place unprecedented restrictions on the funding and activities of non-governmental organizations.
Next, Nihad Abboud drew attention to the violations which have been committed against journalists and photographers as examples of the threats to freedom of expression and of opinion in Egypt. Ms. Abboud further pointed out that the right to freedom of expression is particularly targeted in the context of the right to protest. She spoke about draft legislation to regulate demonstrations, stating that the draft law contains many restrictions on the right to free assembly by allowing the authorities broad powers to ban or restrict demonstrations. ..Perhaps most worrying is that the new constitution includes provisions which restrict on the right to free assembly for the first time in Egypt. Masa Amir turned to the precarious situation of women human rights defenders in Egypt, reminding the audience of the specific targeting of women through virginity tests and other violations by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. The side event was concluded with the call that the international community should reassess its engagement with Egypt, in order to avoid replicating the mistakes of the past, including support for dictatorships which blatantly violate human rights.
As if to demonstrate the precarious situation of HRDs in Egypt Front Line Defenders reports that the Egyptian Human rights defender Hassan Mustafa sentenced to two years imprisonment on 12 March by the Mansheya Misdemeanour Court in Alexandria on charges of allegedly assaulting a member of Alexandria Prosecution Office. Numerous supporters of the human rights defender gathered in front of the Courthouse at the time of the hearing to protest against his trial and demand his release. Hassan Mustafa is a well-known human rights defender in Alexandria who has defended the rights of detainees and campaigned on issues such as police brutality and economic rights. According to Hassan Mustafa’s lawyer, the Court heard only two out of fifteen testimonies, of witnesses who denied that he assaulted the Prosecution Office member.
Ms. Perveen Rehman (56), worked for the betterment of the poor and neglected
A statement of 14 March 2013 by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) starts dramatically with this “When a small lady weighing hardly 60 kilograms working for the betterment of poor slum-dwellers, and amongst the under-privileged in poorer residential areas, is viewed as a dire threat to the Taliban and the local administration, the sanity of these institutions, and those that man them, is called into question. However, with yesterday’s murder of Ms. Perveen Rehman, an even more fundamental question confronts us: the raison d’être of the Pakistani state itself.”
Ms. Perveen Rehman, an architect by profession, was targeted and murdered in broad daylight yesterday, March 13th. Fifty-six years of age, having worked for the poor and underprivileged for 25 of them, Ms. Rehman was murdered close to her office as she arrived in a car. Armed men riding two motorcycles approached and opened fire on her. She was struck twice in the face and once in the neck. She was rushed to the Abbasi Shaheed Hospital where she succumbed to her wounds. It is believed that she was assassinated by Deobandi militants of Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamat (ASWJ). These are said to be the same militants responsible for the deaths of the four anti-polio workers and the attack on Malala Yusufzai.
The statement then continues to describe Ms. Rehman as a tireless social activist, working for people living in slum areas. She had, however, been receiving death threats for some time. Read the rest of this entry »
In a lengthy interview with ‘GenevaInternational Cooperation’ published on 13 March 2013, Andrew Clapham, the widely respected Director of the Geneva Academy of International Law and Human Rights, argues that the Human Rights Council of the UN, which replaced the Commission on Human Rights (of which, in 2005, Kofi Annan said that its “declining credibility has cast a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole”) has in the end made important improvements. The interview is certainly worth reading in its totality but for the hard-pressed here are some quotes:
Q: Do you think the Human Rights Council has been effective in restoring the damage caused by its predecessor to the reputation of the UN? Yes. The credibility of the Human Rights Council is now much higher than that of the Commission on Human Rights in 2005. One of the major criticisms of the former Commission was the ability for states to use political pressure to focus attention on individual states. Under the four year Universal Periodic Review (UPR) cycle, it is possible to read reports about the United States, China, Russia, Haiti, Iraq and Libya, and not just the states that are out of favour at any given time. One of the crucial differences is the fact that the Human Rights Council now considers the situations in powerful states. The ability of the Human Rights Council to establish Commissions of Inquiry is another important and unexpected development. These Commissions are now highly regarded references and sources of information.
Q: Can you give some examples of concrete achievements that have resulted from the creation of the Human Rights Council?Read the rest of this entry »
reports that on 8 March 2013, human rights defender and trade union leader Carlos Antonio Hernández Mendoza was shot dead as he travelled back from Honduras. Carlos Hernández Mendoza was a leader in the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de Salud de Guatemala – SNTSG (National Health Workers Union of Guatemala), as well as a member of several other social movements. A prominent defender of labour and land rights, Carlos Hernández Mendoza was also actively engaged in struggling for prior consultation rights for indigenous communities whose lives and livelihoods are affected by large-scale dam construction and mega projects in the region. On 8 March 2013, at approximately 8.30am, Carlos Hernández Mendoza was travelling in a vehicle through the municipality of Camotán, department of Chiquimula, returning from a trip to Honduras, when he was stopped by individuals asking for a lift. When the human rights defender descended from his vehicle to assist them, he was shot and killed.
Carlos Hernández Mendoza had previously reported incidents of alleged surveillance when cars with darkly tinted windows were noticed in the vicinity of his residence. In November 2010, he was detained in Chiquimula and accused of carrying out activities that threatened national security and of holding illegal meetings. The charges were a result of the human rights defender’s participation in mobilising community protest to defend natural resources.
The new International Civil Society Network on Infrastructures for Peace (I4P) is launched today with its website: www.I4Pinternational.org
Many countries lack capacities and structures to deal adequately with on-going and potential violent conflict. This has emerged as a central obstacle to the attainment of equitable and sustainable development. In recent years, the number of conflicts has been increasing once again. What is needed – in the same way as for threatening natural disasters – is a comprehensive, inclusive and long-term approaches to peacebuilding, which involves the main stakeholders. Infrastructures for peace and Local Peace Committees can be important pillars to counter these dangerous developments or substantially reduce their impact. Several local peacebuilding NGOs and practitioners felt the need to exchange experiences and best practices about this approach and make I4P more recognised:the network was born and counts now some seventy members. There is an Interim Steering Committee with members from three continents.
Human rights and human rights defenders play a crucial role in this process – even if not spelled out in the main pages of the new website. The local peace groups mentioned as members however frequently refer to the need for human rights and social justice as they realise that lasting peace cannot be the ‘peace of the graveyard’. Moreover, it is the local Human Rights Defenders who suffer most from the absence of peace as this blog and many more sources regularly demonstrate.
Last Saturday, two distinguished human rights defenders in Saudi Arabia were sentenced to jail in Riyadh for establishing an unlicensed human rights organization. Mohammed Al-Qahtani and Abdullah Al-Hamad (or Hamid) established the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA) in 2009. The organization’s mission is to promote human rights awareness within the Kingdom. ACPRA called for political representation of Saudi citizens and creation of laws to protect minorities. The organization also worked on documenting human rights abuses within the Kingdom. Despite multiple efforts to license ACPRA, the organization’s petitions were rejected and the group was eventually banned by Saudi authorities. The two men were sentenced to 10 and 11 years in prison on accusations including the rather illiberal sounding “breaking allegiance to the King”, “disseminating false information through foreign entities” and “forming an unlicensed organization“. This trial and the ensuing heavy sentence are clearly linked to them exercising their rights to freedom of opinion and association.
Brussels-based Protection International is looking for a fundraiser with a strong capacity to investigate and follow up possible funding opportunities. What PI is looking for is a person with at least two-year experience in fundraising for NGOs or relevant organisations, a strong capacity to elaborate budgets and write proposals and reports, an interest in human rights related issues, and extensive skills to work with donors constructively.
In a case that was followed closely in this blog, a Bahraini human rights defender accused of sending out twitters with ‘false information’, there is finally some good news: a Bahraini court has acquitted Said Yousif Al-Muhafdah of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR – 2012 Final Nominee of the MEA). “It’s a great relief that Said Yousif was acquitted today, bringing an end to three months of judicial harassment. Let’s hope this means the courts are beginning to show a better understanding of what freedom of expression means,” said Human Rights First’s Brian Dooley. Al-Muhafdah was arrested in December 2012 for “spreading false information on Twitter.”
His case is one in a string cases stemming from the Kingdom’s ongoing judicial harassment of human rights defenders. It followed last year’s jailing of Nabeel Rajab, President of the BCHR, and of human rights activist Zainab Al Khawaja in February 2013. “This is a small victory, but unfortunately there are many other cases of judicial harassment that continue to wind their way through Bahrain’s judicial system,” Brian Dooley noted. On March 21, the appeal of 23 medics, each sentenced to three months in prison after treating injured protestors in 2011, will continue. A verdict is expected at a date soon after. Dooley, who has authored four reports about the ongoing crackdown in Bahrain, has been forbidden access to the nation for more than a year. “This is not how a nation that wants to trumpet its human rights record treats monitors” Dooley added.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 