Posts Tagged ‘AI’
Threats against women’s rights advocate Denis Mukwege in DRC mobilize medical community
October 30, 2012Editorial “Waiting for Lefty” regrets absence of human rights concern in debate
October 18, 2012In an editorial “Waiting for Lefty”, William Fisher (former government official – http://billfisher.blogspot.com) muses about the final debate between Obama and Romney and concludes that there was a glaring lack of reference to the human rights issues that dominated the first election campaign. The relevant part reads:
“Obama started out in 2010 with the electoral wind at his back. On his first day in office he vowed to close the military prison at Guantnamo Bay, where detainees slated to have been released months — years — ago are still there, exactly where they started and no closer to freedom for the innocent. Scary because they weren’t released. Except the ones who committed suicide. They’re back home now.
When the electoral air was all filled with “hope and change” and “yes, we can, “Was Obama simply pandering to the Left — whose votes were a big help in getting him elected? After all, if he threw them all under a bus at this stage, where could they go? Vote for Romney? No way. Not vote at all? A possibility.
More disenchanted bodies widening the enthusiasm gap — and that could cost the president his job in a close election. And if he beats Romney, he will have to contend, in his second term, with a large and growing gaggle of organizations that have only one overarching interest — the restoration of human rights and the return to the rule of law.
But in a second Obama term, I would not expect hundreds of groups like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, and Human Rights First — and thousands of individual human rights defenders –– to be quite so patient and seemingly understand as their first-term counterparts.”
Amir, author of Zahras Paradise, talks about his album on YouTube
October 11, 2012This dates back to March 2012. I missed it and so may have you. It is a excellent interview by Iran specialist Drewery Dyke of of AI with the author Amir. He is an Iranian-American human rights activist, journalist and documentary filmmaker.
Set in the aftermath of Iran’s fraudulent elections of 2009, Zahra’s Paradise is the fictional story of the search for Mehdi, a young protestor who has disappeared in the Islamic Republic’s gulags. Mehdi has vanished in an extrajudicial twilight zone where habeas corpus is suspended. What stops his memory from being obliterated is not the law. It is the grit and guts of a mother who refuses to surrender her son to fate and the tenacity of a brother—a blogger—who fuses culture and technology to explore and explode absence: the void in which Mehdi has vanished.
In conversation with Amir, author of Zahras Paradise – YouTube.
TRADE UNIONISTS IN COLOMBIA STILL AT RISK
August 20, 2012While there have been some notable improvements in Colombia with regard to the situation of Human Rights Defenders over the last years, there are still terrible lapses as shown by the case of the trade unionists Oscar Arturo Orozco and Wilson Jaramillo’s who were shot at when traveling by car on 4 August in the Caldas Department. The president of the Caldas branch of the Trade Union Congress (Central Unitaria de Trabajadores, CUT), Oscar Arturo Orozco and the secretary-general Wilson Jaramillo were travelling by car between Manizales and the municipality of Palestina in Caldas Department when shots were fired by two men on a motorbike and several others standing at the side of the road. Several shots hit the car, but neither man was injured. Both men are also members of the National Movement of Victims of State Crimes (Movimiento Nacional de Víctimas de Crímenes de Estado, MOVICE) and the Colombian Electricity Workers’ Union (Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Electricidad de Colombia, SINTRAELECOL).
Over recent years flyers containing death threats have been repeatedly left at the office of SINTRAELECOL, most recently in mid-July when the death threat contained a picture of bullet cartridges. According to the CUT, 12 trade unionists have been killed in Colombia in this year alone. This attack comes at a time when there had been an order to remove the protection Oscar Arturo Orozco was receiving and when parts of the budget of the Ministry of Interior Protection Programme have been reduced.
Amnesty International, Protection International and other NGOs call for expressions of support: Go to original article
A typical Amnesty branch does typical work for HRDs
December 6, 2011Ahmed Khaleel, an Iraqi citizen who is taking a PhD at York University, gave a talk about Arab poets as human-rights defenders for the Scarborough group of Amnesty International. Dr Jay Prosser, reader in humanities at Leeds University, spoke about his recent co-authored book, Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis. Royalties from his book sales are being donated to Amnesty.
The seminar, at Hull University’s Scarborough campus, was attended by more than 40 people including the deputy mayor, Helen Mallory, who said: “The work Amnesty is doing now is as valuable as it’s always been but possibly more so because there are more human-rights violations taking place around the world. Their work will be neverending because, sadly, atrocities will always be committed. I’m quite humbled by the work they do.”
Not world-shocking news perhaps but a fine example of the day to day work for HRDs that local groups can do…
source: Amnesty seminar on human rights – News – Scarborough Evening News.
Israel refuses to let HRD Shawan Jabarin travel to receive award in Denmark
November 30, 2011
Image via Wikipedia
On 29 November 29, 2011 Israeli authorities turned West Bank resident Shawan Jabarin, the director of the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq, back at the Allenby Bridge crossing with Jordan, citing a travel ban. Several NGOs, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B’Tselem, said that the Israeli authorities violated Jabarin’s rights in imposing the ban and have not produced any evidence that would justify continuing to restrict him from travel.
The travel ban would seem to be clearly linked to his human rights work as Jabarin was stopped since 2006, when he became director of Al-Haq, a leading human rights organization in the West Bank, while Israel had allowed him to travel abroad eight times in the previous seven years. The Israeli military previously claimed in court that Jabarin was an activist in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which Israel considers a terrorist organization, and that his travel abroad for even a limited period would endanger Israel’s security. However, Israeli authorities have not charged Jabarin with any crime or given him an opportunity to confront the allegations against him. The Israeli High Court of Justice has upheld Jabarin’s travel ban on security grounds, but did so based on secret information that Jabarin and his lawyer were not allowed to see or challenge. “It is hard to believe any claim that Jabarin’s travel to Denmark to receive a human rights award would harm Israeli security, the more so when any evidence is kept secret,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “While civil society groups recognize Jabarin’s courageous work, Israel is punishing him with a travel ban.”
The ban has prevented Jabarin from leaving the West Bank to receive a human rights prize from the Danish PL Foundation (Poul Lauritzen), participate in a European Union forum on human rights, and attend a Human Rights Watch meeting in New York City. “The ban preventing Shawan Jabarin from traveling abroad to receive an award is emblematic of the arbitrary restrictions placed on Palestinian human rights defenders and civil society activists,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s MENA Programme Director. “It must be lifted, and the Israeli authorities must stop using unspecified security concerns to obstruct the work of Palestinian human rights activists.” Nina Atallah, the head of Al-Haq’s monitoring and documentation department, will try to travel to the prize ceremony.
It is a pity that Israel,in this respect, is emulating Iran, which is the only country until now to prevent the MEA Laureate Emad Baghi to travel to his ceremony in 2009.
Related articles
Belarus Side event during Human Rights Council in Geneve
October 6, 2011While on the topic of Belarus I forgot to mention another event: on 20 September, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the Oslo-based Human Rights House Foundation held a side event in Geneva on the prosecution of vice-president of the Federation and Chairman of the Human Rights Centre “Viasna”, Ales Bialiatski, who was arrested on 4 August 2011. The participants watched a short film about Ales Bialiatski. Later, vice-chairman of “Viasna” Valentin Stefanovich and Director of the Belarusian Human Rights House in Vilnius Anna Gerasimova made a speech.
Representatives of EU countries, the Head of EU mission to the UN Human Rights Council, Dimitris Iliopoulos, and NGOs such as AI all highlighted the political motivation of the criminal case against this prominent human rights defender and called upon the Belarusian authorities to immediately release Mr. .
Amnesty International’s big meeting started Sunday 14 August
August 16, 2011On Sunday 14 August Amnesty International started its big meeting (ICM) in Noordwijkerhout in the Netherlands. AI is ‘celebrating’ its 50th anniversary and the list of interveners on the first day illustrates the continued importance of this unique, large, membership-based human rights movement. In addition to the new Secretarty-General Salil Shetty, there were messages from Aung San Suu Kyi (by video), Shirin Ebadi, and Kasha Nabagesera, the 2011 Laureate of the Martin Ennals Award. For a short video summary of the first day go to: http://amnestyicm.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/highlights-from-day-one/
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 