The Huffington Post of 29 November 2015 carried a good piece by Brian Dooley (Human Rights First) under the title “When Closing Civil Society Space Means Killing Human Rights Defenders”. He states that “what sometimes gets overlooked in the discussion around “shrinking civil society space” are direct, violent attacks on human rights defenders.”
He refers to this year’s Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders (HRDs) which details killings of HRDs in Africa, the Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe and the Middle East. And a Note by the UN Secretary-General in July this year included how “defenders also describe their sense that they are often on their own, with the media showing little interest in reporting acts of aggression against them and with little support from political figures…”
On 27 November 2015, Mr Guo Feixiong was sentenced to six years in prison by the Tianhe District People’s Court in Guangzhou, China. Two other human rights defenders, Liu Yuandong and Sun Desheng, received three and two and a half year sentences respectively. In September, Guo Feixiong (pen name of Yang Madding) was awarded the 2015 Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk [https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2015/09/12/2015-front-line-defenders-award-to-chinese-guo-feixiong-yang-maodong/].
Guo Feixiong was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of “gathering crowds to disturb social order” and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”. The latter charge was reportedly added by the judge at the sentencing and therefore one that Guo Feixiong’s lawyers had no opportunity to defend him against, and which resulted in two years being added to his sentence. Liu Yuandong was sentenced to three years, while Sun Desheng was sentenced to two and a half years, both on charges of “gathering crowds to disrupt public order”.
Since his detention in 2013, Guo Feixiong has reportedly been held in a 30 sq metre cell with 30 other detainees. Furthermore, he has been denied permission to go outside or exercise in the prison yard since his initial detention and has alleged ill-treatment by the prison guards. According to his lawyer, Mr Zhang Lei, Guo Feixiong’s health has suffered greatly as a result. It has also been reported that Sun Desheng had had his hands cuffed and legs shackled for long periods after his detention.
With International Women Human Rights Defenders Day coming up (29 November)I will pay special attention to questions that concern them. Here a case of police harassment from Front Line concerning Tanzania: Read the rest of this entry »
On 15 September 2015, the Turin Court of Appeal ruled to release Algerian human rights defender Mr Rachid Mesli, who has been under house arrest since 22 August 2015, and to allow him to leave the country, as reported by Front Line Defenders.
The human rights defender was released before the end of the 40 day period during which the Algerian government could submit a formal request for extradition. The Court recognised Rachid Mesli’s important and peaceful work in the defence of human rights, as well as the high risk of torture he would face if returned to Algeria. While the court is yet to make its final decision on the extradition warrant, the release order highlighted that, according to the information received, Rachid Mesli’s human rights activities were not in any way related to terrorism.
On 22 August, the Italian court placed the human rights defender under house arrest following three days in detention in Aosta prison. Rachid Mesli was arrested on 19 August 2015 (https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/node/29390) as he travelled to Italy on holiday with his wife and son. The arrest occurred as a result of an arrest warrant issued by the Algerian authorities in April 2002 on terrorism-related charges.
Interesting tot note Front Line Defenders’ call on Interpol to ensure the legitimacy of all warrants issued by its members and to put in place safeguards so that the system cannot be abused in order to target human rights defenders.
On Friday 11 September the 2015 Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk was presented to imprisoned Chinese Human Rights Defender Guo Feixiong in Dublin City Hall. Irish author and playwright Sebastian Barry presented the award to Guo’s wife, Zhang Qing, and daughter, Yang Tianjiao (Sara), at the award co-presented by the Al-Jazeera Media Network. Guo has been held in Guangzhou’s Tianhe Detention Center for over 750 days, where is currently awaiting sentencing. Sebastian Barry said:“For human rights defenders the struggle is not just to implement rules and regulations and theoretical international standards. It is is about the right to raise your voice without the fear of arbitrary violence, whether by the state or others. Guo Feixiong has defended farmers illegally evicted from their land, Falun Gong practitioners persecuted for their beliefs and journalists who dared to speak out. He is a symbol of the endurance of the human spirit, of the will to survive and of the human need for the free air of ideas, to make life worth living. He is a worthy recipient of the 2015 Front Line Defenders Award.”
Guo Feixiong (pen name of Yang Maodong) is a leading figure in the movement for human rights China – a struggle fraught with danger for human rights defenders seeking civil, political, economic and social rights; accountability; transparency; and an end to corruption. After more than two years in detention, Guo Feixiong’s lawyers now report that during their most recent meeting, his memory, speech, and mental awareness all showed signs of damage.Last week, a coalition of Chinese human rights activists writing at China Change called his detention “a deliberate effort to harm Guo Feixiong and kill him slowly.”Accepting the Award on behalf of her husband, Zhang Qing said:“Guo Feixiong is a faithful idealist. Although he has experienced a wide range of political persecution by the Chinese government including, being sentenced to four prison terms, being the target of a witch hunt, and enduring countless brutal and evil tortures from the Chinese government he still holds a peaceful and pure heart. He shows enduring strength and courage to pursue rights, equality and justice peacefully. We are proud of Guo Feixiong and all the other human rights defenders and lawyers working to the same end in China”.
Health and holidays (in that order) have slowed down my blog production somewhat this summer, but perhaps this was a welcome break for many of my readers for reasons of holiday and health (in that order I hope). Anyway, during these summer months I read quite some instances of HRD repression related to countries involved in major ‘geo-political’ progress and I started wondering whether this is coincidental. Take the following three cases: Colombia, Iran and Cuba. Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday I reported on Human Rights Watch honoring Yara Bader as the representative of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression. Now I am catching up on the release of her husband and the founder of the Centre, Mazen Darwish, after more than three years in jail. A verdict in his case is expected later this month. Darwish was arrested, along with two colleagues, in February 2012 during a raid. HusseinGhreir and Hani al-Zaitani were freed last month (17 July and 18 July 2015, respectively) as part of an amnesty that was to have included Darwish, but his release was delayed.
Many NGOs (i.a. Frontline, the Observatory, AI and HRW) and Governments have welcomed the release but warn that Mazen Darwish, and his colleagues Hussein Ghrer and Hani al-Zaitani, have been charged with “publicising terrorist acts” and are still to be tried before the Syrian Anti-Terrorism Court. They invariably call for all charges against them to be dropped. “Mazen, Hussein and Hani are not terrorists, they are human rights defenders,” FIDH President Karim Lahidji said “All charges against them must be dropped immediately”. “We urge the Syrian Anti-Terrorism Court to acquit them during the verdict hearing on August 31, as their judicial harassment has only been aimed at sanctioning their human rights activities”, OMCT Secretary General Gerald Staberock concluded.
[On May 15, 2013, in its Resolution 67/262, the UN General Assembly called for the release of the three defenders. In January 2014, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention also found that the three defenders had been arbitrarily deprived of their liberty due to their human rights activities and called for their immediate release. Finally, UN Security Council Resolution 2139, adopted on February 22, 2014, also demanded the release of all arbitrarily detained people in Syria.]
in its July 2015 Newsletter puts the spotlight on Khalef Khalifa, Executive Director of the NGO MUHURI in Kenya.
On 8 April 2015, the official Gazette notice listed 85 companies and organisations, including MUHURI and Haki Africa, as suspected of having links to terrorism and linking them as specified entities. On 20 and 21 April, the police raided the offices of both organizations, disabling their servers, carrying away hard disks and documents, allegedly to determine whether they had been involved in tax evasion. On 28 May, the Non-Governmental Organisations’ Coordination Board announced through the media that they had de-registered the organizations. On 12 June the court dismissed all charges against MUHURI and Haki Africa on the basis that there was no evidence against them.
Khalef Khalifa (KK): As you know, on the 12th June was a good day for us as both MUHURI and Haki Africa, were entirely vindicated in court. The judge dismissed all the charges against us and said that there was absolutely no evidence to link us to terrorism in any form and specifically forbade the police or even the Minister to make any such reference in the future. However the outstanding difficulty is that he refused to unfreeze our bank accounts on the basis that we had failed to include the Central Bank in our case against the state. They have now agreed to join our case calling for the accounts to be freed but we have to wait for another hearing before the judge makes his ruling and we can begin getting back to normal.
FLD: Given the various lines of attack that were opened against MUHURI it seems as though the government was out to get you?
KK: ...we were targeted on three fronts: by the police, the Revenue Commissioners and by the NGO Board. So while the government accused us of terrorism, the Revenue Commissioners descended on our office and took away all out financial documentation to look for evidence of tax avoidance and the NGO Board lodged a complaint that we had not kept them properly informed of our activities, and in particular that we had not informed them of new appointments to our board, as required by the NGO Law. In the final verdict, while the judge said there was no evidence of involvement in terrorism, both the Revenue Commissioners and the NGO Board had to concede that we were 100% compliant with the regulations. The only thing the NGO Board could trip us up on was that while we had notified the NGO Board of the new appointments, we had not used the appropriate, and newly introduced, form. What is interesting is that in the early stages of the case the government was totally focused on pursuing a case on the basis of terrorism, but they quite quickly changed tack and started looking for any small technical failures they could find to try and make a case against us. But they failed because we have always operated in an entirely open and transparent way.
KK: The real reason for their animus against MUHURI is that we are critical of the police and have investigated their involvement in extrajudicial executions and forced disappearances. There have been at least 52 such killings and disappearances in the Mombasa region in the last two years. The police claim to be fighting terror but in fact terror is a more accurate description of the way the police themselves work. In one incident 8 people were shot dead in a church. The police claimed that it was an attack by Al Shabaab. However when the perpetrators were arrested it was clear that they were not Muslims and in fact had no affiliation to any particular group. The police then hid the names and tried to maintain the fiction of an Al Shabaab attack.
FLD: Will the work of MUHURI get back to normal now?
KK: ...As soon as the accounts are unfrozen we will continue out work as normal. For us it is clear that the government wants to intimidate and frighten MUHURI but we will not be intimidated – we will not give up.
The more general backdrop can be found in earlier Front Line messages, the 5 June appeal by the Observatory [http://www.omct.org/human-rights-defenders/urgent-interventions/kenya/2015/06/d23190/] and the statements made by NGOs on 26 June 2015 at the adoption by the UN Human Rights Council of the report of the Universal Periodic Review [UPR] of Kenya:
– International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) : Kenya should create an enabling environment for the work of human rights defenders – including repealing restrictions on NGO access to foreign funding and amending or repealing the Information Communication Amendment Bill and Media Council Bill. The statement also emphasised the risks faced by LGBTI people and organisations in Kenya as a result of the criminalisation of same-sex conduct. ‘It is crucial that the voices of human rights defenders are safeguarded and encouraged. This assists to create a vibrant, independent and diverse civil society which is essential to protect human rights, democracy and the rule of law’ said Michael Ineichen of ISHR.
AllAfrica.com reports on Human Rights Watch comments: “We note Kenya’s acceptance of some important recommendations such as commitments to investigate torture and extrajudicial killings, including the killing of activist Hassan Guyo, and to fully cooperate with the International Criminal Court. But we remain concerned that there has been little tangible progress in many key areas. The ongoing abuses and recent threats to civil society illustrate a lack of commitment to implement these recommendations.”
Waleed Abu al-Khair, a human rights defender from Saudi Arabia has won the 2015 Ludovic Trarieux Prize, a prestigious award for human rights lawyers [for more info on the award see: http://www.brandsaviors.com/thedigest/award/ludovic-trarieux-international-human-rights-prize]. Waleed Abu al-Khair is a long-standing campaigner (started the Monitor of Human Rights in Saudi Arabia – MHRSA) and was given a 15-year jail sentence by a Jeddah court last year, in a ruling that Human Rights Watch (HRW), Front Line and many others have heavily criticized [https://thoolen.wordpress.com/tag/waleed-abu-al-khair/].
Bertrand Favreau, the founder of the Ludovic Trarieux Prize, told AFP the award goes to those who “through their work, activities or suffering defend the respect for human rights“.
On 27 November 2015, Mr 
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 