Posts Tagged ‘Human rights defender’
February 3, 2013
Human rights defenders from Iran, Cambodia, Kenya, Uzbekistan, Colombia and Mauritania are finalists for the 2013 Front Line Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk. The jury is made up of members of the Irish and the European Parliament as well as Front Line Defenders board member Noeline Blackwell.
The winner of the 2013 Front Line Award for Human Rights Defenders will be announced at a ceremony in Dublin later in the year.
Finalists for Front Line Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk 2013 are:
Mam Sonando – Cambodia – has devoted his life to helping the poor and disenfranchised of Cambodia, fighting for their rights while also following the non-violent precepts of his Buddhist faith. He is a journalist and the Director of one of only three independent radio stations in Cambodia where the state has almost complete monopoly over the media, and crackdowns on free speech have led to widespread self-censorship. He is also founder and president of a national organisation called the Association of Democrats, which actively promotes democracy and human rights. He was arrested In early July 2012 and despite there being absolutely no evidence to link him with the so-called secessionist movement, he was found guilty on 1 October 2012 of instigating insurrection and incitement to take up arms against the state and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment.
Mansoureh Behkish – Iran – is a women’s rights activist and co-founder of Mothers of Khavaran and Mothers of Laleh Park. As a supporter of non-violent resistance and a HRD she has spent the past three decades empowering survivors and victims of human rights abuses. In particular she seeks to help the mothers, sisters and wives of the thousands imprisoned or executed by the Islamic Republic authorities, to seek justice through legal and humanitarian channels.As a result of her work as a HRD, she herself has faced continuous harassment, confiscation of her passport and violation of her right to travel and three terms of imprisonment.
David Rabelo Crespo – Colombia – has worked for 35 years in the defence of human rights. In the early years, he worked mainly in defence of social, economic and cultural rights, and later worked for worker’s rights, promoting social and union mobilisation. In more recent years, he has worked to defend the lives of others although in doing so he has put his own life at risk. Between 1998 and 2004 he was director of the Municipal Peace Council, a body devised to protect the lives of the local people who, with the arrival of the paramilitaries were at risk from the upsurge in assassinations of social and community leaders, and a series of massacres carried out with impunity. David Rabelo Crespo has devoted his life to promoting respect for human rights and international humanitarian standards in the Magdalena Medio region of Colombia, and even though he is now imprisoned he continues to work to protect the rights of political prisoners in Colombian prisons.
Bahtiyor Hamraev – Uzbekistan – has been a dedicated campaigner for human rights in Uzbekistan for the last 15 years. He has been head of the Djizak regional branch of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan (HRSU) and has documented human rights violations in this region. In recent years he has become the main contact with families of imprisoned human rights defenders, helping to spread the information about their conditions in detention, the torture and ill-treatment and helping to provide the families with legal aid and financial assistance. The price he has had to pay has sometimes been far too high, but despite all of these difficulties, he has continued to work, refused to leave the country and tried to make a difference in one of the worst human rights situations in the region. Sadly, Hamraev is suffering from terminal cancer, yet he continues to send information about human rights violations and to assist families of imprisoned human rights defenders.
Biram Dah Ould Abeid – Mauritania – has been threatened, defamed and harassed because of his work for human rights and against slavery in Mauritania. He has been arrested and ill-treated on several occasions and in April 2012 he was “disappeared” for several weeks into a secret, high-security government facility, without being able to contact to his family and without any legal assistance. It is believed he would have been killed but for the international outcry. He was released in September 2012 but has chosen to continue his work inside Mauritania.
Ruth Mumbi – Kenya – is a passionate community mobiliser, and is the founder and current National Coordinator of Bunge la Wamama, a women’s chapter of Bunge la Mwananchi a movement that conducts strong advocacy and campaigning on issues of social justice and accountability in different parts of Kenya. She was born and still lives in Kiamaiko, a Nairobi slum and she began her involvement in community mobilisation initiatives in the late 1990s, when she was barely 16 years of age.
For further information please contact Jim Loughran, Head of Communications, Front Line Defenders
Tel +353 (0)1 212 37 50
Mobile +353 (0)87 9377586
Email: jimloughran@frontlinedefenders.org
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Tags: awards, Cambodia, Colombia, Front Line, Human right, Human rights defender, Human Rights Defenders, Iran, Kenya, Mauritania, nominees 2013, Uzbekistan
February 2, 2013
Radhia Nasraoui, human rights defender and lawyer, is awarded the 2012 Olof Palme Prize, for her untiring work against torture and impunity for more than three decades. As a concerned and patriotic citizen, she has under severe pressure defended human rights in Tunisia and challenged authorities under the motto “We must use our voices. Not saying anything makes us accomplices of the oppression”.
Waleed Sami Abu al-Khair receives the 2012 Olof Palme Prize for his strong, self-sacrificing and sustained struggle to promote respect for human and civil rights for both men and women in Saudi Arabia. Together with like-minded citizens and colleagues, Waleed Sam Abu AlKhair does so with the noble goal of contributing to a just and modern society in his country and region.
THE OLOF PALME PRIZE, the Swedish labor movement’s most prestigious award since 1987 when the Olof Palme Fund’s Board decided to establish an annual prize for a particularly significant achievement in the spirit of Olof Palme. The prize consists of USD 75 000.
Posted in Human Rights Defenders | 1 Comment »
Tags: Advocacy Organizations, Human right, human rights advocates, Human Rights and Liberties, Human rights defender, labour movement, Middle East, Olof Palme, Radhia Nasraoui, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Tunisia, Waleed Sami Abu al-Khair
January 31, 2013
When writing about individual Human Rights Defenders the tendency is to give attention to those in the front line who are in immediate trouble. This time I want to refer to a HRD teaching at the University of Connecticut based on a blog post by Kenneth Best of 30 January 2013. It concerns Luis van Isschot, an assistant professor of history, who specializes in the study of human rights in Latin America ( photo by Peter Morenus/UConn Photo).
Conversation around the dinner table in the van Isschot home in Montreal was a bit different than in most Canadian homes. Growing up with a Spanish, Peruvian, and Dutch family heritage, Luis van Isschot listened to discussions about Latin American history and politics led by his father, a physician who treated families in a clinic based in Montreal’s Latino community…….
…His path to a doctoral degree developed from his volunteer work in Guatemala and later in Colombia, where he served as a human rights observer. It was during his time in Colombia that a friend who was a university professor and a historian told him that one of the most important books of Colombian history was written by a professor from his hometown of Montreal, Catherine Le Grand at McGill University, and that he should look her up. He did, and it led to his enrollment in the doctoral program. “She made it seem that you could be a wonderful teacher, a cutting-edge scholar, and have a balanced life of engagement in your community, and that the Ph.D. was a way of doing that,” van Isschot says. “The university is central to the community, not apart from it. That makes sense to me.”
He later became involved with MEA Laureate 2001 Peace Brigades International, a nonpartisan organization that sends international volunteers to areas of conflict to provide protective accompaniment to human rights defenders threatened by political violence in 11 nations, including in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In addition to serving as a human rights observer in Colombia, he also traveled to the Great Lakes Region of Africa, doing research in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi.
“It was a really important experience for me to go somewhere where the language of human rights and social justice and the understanding of history really enriched my own understanding of what I was working on in Latin America,” he says. His experience in Colombia led him to focus his doctoral studies on human rights activities in that nation’s oil capital, Barrancabermeja, where he lived for a year. The city was the center of a major urban war between Colombian paramilitary groups and leftist guerillas. Between 1998 and 2002, in a city of 300,000 there were about 2,000 violent murders. “It was a devastating period. The relationships I made with Colombian human rights activists, teachers, and scholars convinced me that I needed to find some place to explore the issues,” he says.
His book, The Social Origins of Human Rights: Protesting Political Violence in Columbia’s Oil Capital, 1919-2010, is near completion, and scheduled to be published in early 2014. His new research project is titled “When the Courts Make History: the Impact of the Inter American Court of Human Rights in Latin America’s Conflict Zones,” and examines the historical changes set in motion by the pursuit of justice across borders.
http://today.uconn.edu/blog/2013/01/focusing-on-human-rights-with-a-latin-american-perspective/
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Tags: Africa, Canada, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Human rights defender, human rights education, human rights teaching, Latin America, Luis van Isschot, McGill University, PBI, Peace Brigades International, research, University of Connecticut, USA
January 29, 2013
On 28 January 2013, a number of Brazilian civil society organisations and social movements addressed an open letter to the Coordinator of the National Programme for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (NPPHRD) and the Presidency regarding the security situation for human rights defender Alexandre Anderson de Souza.
Alexandre Anderson de Souza is head of the Associação dos Homens do Mar – AHOMAR (Association of Seamen), an organisation set up to defend the rights of the fisherfolk working in Rio de Janeiro, and particularly those affected by the construction of a gas pipeline for Petrobras. AHOMAR argues that there are reports of environmental permit irregularities in the construction of the pipeline and it will have a negative impact on local flora and fauna as well as on the livelihood of those who fish in those waters in the Guanabara Bay.
Alexandre Anderson de Souza has suffered a number of threats to his life and has been under the NPPHRD since 2009, but the federal government has delegated the responsibility to authorities in the state of Rio de Janeiro, where he and his family live. However, the human rights defender and a number of Brazilian civil society organisations and social movements that support him, have been repeatedly expressing their discontent with the protection offered by the state programme and the conditions in which Alexandre Anderson de Souza, his wife Ms Daize Menezes and their children have been forced to live. As the situation has worsened the human rights defender and his family have had to relocate to different hotels in the city of Rio de Janeiro but the locations were highly insecure. The buildings did not have 24-hour reception personnel and the rooms they were accommodated in had no telephone. The protection programme has been unable to ensure Alexandre and his family’s return to their residence in Magé, and as a result the human rights defender remains unable to resume his work at AHOMAR. Four members of AHOMAR have been killed to date.
Another point of discontent with the state protection programme has been the unsatisfactory level of legal support provided to the human rights defender by the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Projeto Legal (Legal Project). Projeto Legal has signed an agreement with the government of the state of Rio de Janeiro, in the context of the state protection programme, to provide legal support and advice to the human rights defenders included in the programme. After repeated complaints about the NGO’s inaction in several instances, Alexandre Anderson de Souza received information from a reliable source that one of Projeto Legal’s main funders is Petrobras, the same oil company whose actions the human rights defender and his organisation AHOMAR have been trying to hold accountable for environmental damages. The information was confirmed on the websites of both Petrobras and the NGO, but neither they, nor the government of the state of Rio de Janeiro, have clarified the terms of the agreement, raising doubts over the impartiality of the organisation and a conflict of interests.
The open letter signed by several civil society organisation addressed the main concerns of Alexandre Anderson de Souza and other NGOs working with human rights defenders in the country. While welcoming the formal establishment of the state of Rio de Janeiro’s protection programme for human rights defenders through the Decree 44.038 signed on 18 January 2013, the letter asks for Alexandre and his wife Daize, as well as other human rights defenders who are currently under the protection of the state, to have their security ensured by the National Protection Programme until the state protection programme is fully operating and able to fully ensure the safety of human rights defenders in the territory of the state of Rio de Janeiro.
Front Line Defenders is gravely concerned following reports of the vulnerable security situation of human rights defender Alexandre Anderson de Souza and his family, and of other human rights defenders under the protection of the state of Rio de Janeiro.
http://racismoambiental.net.br/2013/01/carta-aberta-ao-coordenador-nacional-do-programa-de-protecao-aos-defensores-de-direitos-humanos-sr-igo-martini/#more-85964
Posted in Front Line, human rights, Human Rights Defenders | 2 Comments »
Tags: Alexandre Anderson de Souza, Brasil, environmental issues, Front Line, Front Line Defenders, human rights, Human rights defender, Non-governmental organization, Petrobras, protection, threats
January 28, 2013
On 24 January 2013, human rights defender Martha Díaz was targeted again with a death threat.
On 24 January, a package in a manila envelope was delivered to the residence of Martha Díaz, which contained a mass card and note with letters cut from a newspaper. The letters stated: “You are dead, you are a collaborator of the guerilla, we are not joking, one of you is going to die”[translated from Spanish]. On 22 January, the human rights defender had already received a pamphlet sent by a group who identified themselves as “Los Rastrojos”.
Martha Díaz is Director of AFUSODO, an organisation of relatives of victims of extrajudicial executions and a member organisation of MOVICE (National Movement of the Victims of State Crimes). Since its creation, AFUSADO has received some 27 threats. Front Line Defenders issued an urgent appeal https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/node/20842 on death threats received by Martha Díaz on 14 November 2012, and has issued previous appeals on threats against human rights organisations in the Cauca and Valle del Cauca departments.
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Tags: Colombia, Death threat, death threats, Front Line, human rights, Human rights defender, impunity, Martha Diaz, MOVICE
January 26, 2013
The Human Rights House Foundation (HRHF) was informed today by its partners that prominent human rights defenders were arrested in Baku, Azerbaijan, in connection with a protest held on Saturday 26 January 2013:
Hundreds of people have demonstrated in Azerbaijan’s capital to express solidarity with recent protests in the central town of Ismayilli.More than 40 participants to the peaceful protests were detained, including prominent blogger Emin Milli, Rafto Prize winner 2009 Malahat Nasibova, human rights lawyer Intigam Alieyev, as well as investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova.The arrests happen to come two days after the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted a resolution on the human rights situation in Azerbaijan and called upon the authorities to stop attacks and harassment against human rights defenders. The Azerbaijani human rights defenders present in Strasbourg held a joint press conference in the Council of Europe buildings on Wednesday 23 January 2013.
“By arresting within a crowd of protesters also these prominent human rights defenders, Azerbaijan authorities show that they use detention as a tool to punish critical voices, few days after those critical voices expressed their opinions at the Council of Europe” says HRHF.
Posted in human rights | 2 Comments »
Tags: Azerbaijan, Baku, Council of Europe, Emin Milli, freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, harassment, human rights, Human rights defender, Human Rights Defenders, Human Rights House Foundation, Intigam Alieyev, Malahat Nasibova, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe
January 25, 2013
Front Line Defenders launched today its 2013 Annual Report on human rights defenders, which rather confusingly in fact covers 2012. It highlights developments in the
situation of human rights defenders in 2012 and analyses the situation in each region of the world. It concludes: “The sad reality is that while governments
proclaim their support for human rights and their respect for the work of human rights defenders in international fora, in practice, human rights defenders face a daily struggle for survival.”
In 2012, Front Line Defenders issued 287 urgent appeals on 460 human rights defenders at risk in 69 countries; it provided 267 security grants and trained 358 human rights defenders.
The Report, currently in English, will shortly be available in French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic and Farsi.The Report is available at
http://www.frontlinedefenders.org/node/21376 <http://www.frontlinedefenders.org//node/21376>
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Tags: 2013, annual report 2012, Front Line Defenders, human rights, Human Rights and Liberties, Human rights defender, Human Rights Defenders
January 25, 2013
In January 2013, detained human rights defenders and Twerwaneho Listeners Club (TLC) members Messrs Gerald Kankya, Simon Amanyire and Gilbert Kayondo were released on bail following a decision by the Public Prosecutor that no evidence existed of defamatory statements made by the individuals against Uganda’s First Family. However, the human rights defenders immediately faced new charges and are scheduled to report to the Fort Portal Police Station on 30 January 2013 for interrogation. The charges include inciting violence, disseminating harmful propaganda, while other charges relate to funding and the operation of programmes of the organisation. TLC is a non-governmental organisation based in Fort Portal that carries out human rights advocacy and monitoring work, including through radio programmes, with a view to holding public leaders more accountable.
On the afternoon of 22 January 2013, police conducted searches of the offices of TLC and of the residences of Gerald Kankya and Simon Amanyire. Two computers were confiscated from the TLC offices, while during the search of Gerald Kankya’s residence, police barricaded the gate of the residence with their vehicle, blocking Gerald Kankya’s wife from gaining access to her home. While searching Simon Amanyire’s residence, police confiscated a number of documents.
For more information on this case, see Front Line Defenders’ appeal http://www.frontlinedefenders.org/node/21363 issued on 23 January 2013, as well as previous urgent appeals and updates documenting instances of harassment of TLC members.
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Tags: corruption, Fort Portal, freedom of expression, Front Line, Front Line Defenders, harassment, human rights, Human Rights and Liberties, Human rights defender, Human Rights Defenders, impunity, Non-governmental organization, TLC, Uganda
January 24, 2013
The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the FIDH and OMCT, received information from the local group “Voix des sans-voix pour les droits de l’Homme ” about serious threats against the HRD Philomène Muamba, President of ADDEF ( l’Association pour la défense des droits des enfants et femmes opprimés), based in Kasaï-Occidental. It seems that on 17 January at 03h00 in the morning 3 policemen and 2 military came to the house of Ms Philomène Muamba, in Tshikapa, without any written order. As she was not home, they expressed threats against her little sister. Philomène Muamba then lodged a complaint against X with both the military and civilian prosecutors in Tshikapa.
Since 2011 Philomène Muamba has received several death threats on the telephone along the lines that “you had us arrested and thought we were going to die in jail but …we will bury you”. In 2011 et 2012, she was indeed at the basis of a trial that had led to the conviction of persons who had been accused of several cases of rape. And one should note that on 17 January 2013 around 20h00 several detainees – including men mentioned above – had escaped from the central prison in Tshikapa.
The original report is only in French: http://www.omct.org/fr/human-rights-defenders/urgent-interventions/congo-dem-republic/2013/01/d22133/
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Tags: death threats, FIDH, Human rights defender, impunity, International Federation for Human Rights, Observatory, OMCT, Philomène Muamba, Protection of Human Rights Defenders, rape, Tshikapa, women human rights defenders, World Organisation Against Torture
January 22, 2013
In the framework of its Sponsorship project ‘Defend the defenders‘, OMCT released in January 2013 a portrait of Stanislav Dmitrievsky, prominent Russian human rights defender and Chairman of the Russian Chechen Friendship Society. Mr. Dmitrievsky, who is sponsored by the Swiss Clown Dimitri, is once again facing judicial harassment. As the court summons him for co-authoring the book “International Tribunal for Chechnya”, it is feared that Stanislav Dmitrievsky will have to face criminal charges if the publication is recognized as “extremist material”. Stanislav Dmitrievsky is sponsored by Swiss clown Dimitri in the framework of the OMCT Project Defend the defenders.
Stanislav is a Russian human rights activist, a writer and an editor. He has devoted his life to actively fight against injustice in Russia and North Caucasus. Former Editor-in-chief of the newspaper Pravozaschita (“Human Rights Defense”), he has then been involved in human rights non-profit organisations. He is also involved in the civil society movement against the reportedly unlawful de-listing and demolition of buildings of cultural significance in Russia. He his currently the chairman of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (RCFS), a Finland-based NGO. The mandate of the RCFS is to monitor the human rights respect in North Caucasus and especially Chechnya. Regrettably, Mr. Dmitrievsky had to move the originally Russia-based RCFS headquarters to Finland when the Court of Justice of Nizhnii Novgorod shut down the NGO in 2006.
Mr. Dmitrievsky is also a consultant for the Nizhny Novgorod Foundation to Support Tolerance, directed by Ms. Oksana Chelysheva. This Foundation has taken over the work of the RCFS after its closure in Russia, and is now one of the three organisations composing the reconstituted RCFS in Finland. Their collaboration led to the publication of “International Tribunal for Chechnya”, the book currently subjected to investigation about its alleged “terrorist” content.
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Tags: chechen friendship society, Chechnya, Dmitrievsky, Finland, human rights, human rights activist, Human rights defender, North Caucasus, OMCT, OMCT Project Defend the defenders, Russia, Russian Chechen Friendship Society
Human rights defenders from Iran, Cambodia, Kenya, Uzbekistan, Colombia and Mauritania are finalists for the 2013 Front Line Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk. The jury is made up of members of the Irish and the European Parliament as well as Front Line Defenders board member Noeline Blackwell.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 