share information on human rights defenders, with special focus on human rights awards and laureates
After her father, Oswaldo Paya, was killed in a car accident, Rosa María Payá had two choices: keep her head down, or raise her own voice. She chose the latter. Today, despite the threats Cuban dissidents face from the Castro regime, Payá is demanding accountability for her father’s death and is pushing forward on his ambitious plan for a free and democratic Cuba. From the 2016 Oslo Freedom Forum on 24 May 2016. https://oslofreedomforum.com/talks/let-cuba-decide
On 8 June 2016 Human Rights Watch asked the Egyptian authorities to stop persecuting a lawyer and two judges who engaged in the suspicious activity of proposing an anti-torture law!!!
Wang’s attorney Wen Donghai welcomed the award. “They used a serious of objective criteria, for example, the fact that Wang Yu often gave legal assistance to clients from vulnerable groups,” Wen said. “This has nothing to do with any government, nor with diplomacy.” But he said the award is unlikely to help Wang’s case with the Chinese authorities. “I don’t hold out much hope of that, because our government has a very biased attitude to such prizes, and they see human rights groups as trying to interfere in China’s internal affairs,” Wen said. “In reality, rights groups aren’t targeting China, but trying to help victims and vulnerable people around the world.” Wang has unfortunately figured regularly in this blog: https://thoolen.wordpress.com/tag/wang-yu/
[The award comes as the families of dozens of rights lawyers detained on similar charges hit out at the government for denying the detainees access to their lawyers, and amid concerns that some detainees may have been tortured or sexually abused in police detention centers.]
In Hong Kong, protesters marched to Beijing’s Liaison Office in the former British colony on Monday, demanding an inquiry into the 2012 “suicide” death of Chinese labor rights activist Li Wangyang in police custody four years ago. Rights activist Ou Biaofeng said Li’s friends and relatives are under house arrest or close police surveillance on the anniversary of his death. “They are all under surveillance by the state security police, and are cooperating”
For the Lucovic-Trarieux prize 2015: https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2015/06/14/saudi-arabian-human-rights-lawyer-waleed-abu-al-khair-wins-ludovic-trarieux-prize/
Source: Detained Chinese Lawyer Wins Award Amid Calls For Pressure on Human Rights
https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/06/05/us-show-breadth-rights-commitment-china-dialogue
The International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) and the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR) are planning a public discussion about how and why human rights defenders should be consulted in the development of National Action Plans on Business and Human Rights (NAPs) and protected by their provisions. This event will also launch ISHR and ICAR’s new guidance on this subject, situating NAPs in the broader contexts of extreme risks facing human rights defenders taking on business abuses. Wednesday 15 June 2016, 12h30 – 14h00, Palais des Nations, Geneva. (Room to be confirmed) Read the rest of this entry »
Hina Jilani will speak on the subject of “Protecting Human Rights Defenders Worldwide.” Ms Jilani, from Lahore in Pakistan, is a lawyer, civil rights activist, and an advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. She has been active in the movement for peace, human rights, and women’s rights in Pakistan for more than three decades and is internationally recognised for her expertise in critical human rights investigations. especially as the first UN rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders. The event will incorporate an interview with Ms Jilani and Mrs Robinson. The lecture is free of charge and open to the public. For more information or to reserve a seat visit www.maryrobinsoncentre.ie/events.
More posts about Hina Jilani: https://thoolen.wordpress.com/tag/hina-jilani/
She won the 2000 Ginetta Sagan award and the 2008 American Bar Association Human Rights Award.
After more than eight years in the making, the documentary ‘The Cause of Progress’ will have its world première at the Sheffield international documentary festival on 11 June 2016. Preliminary versions of this film by Chris Kelly were shown in closed circles (see: https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/documentary-the-rights-of-others-shows-human-rights-defenders-in-cambodia-against-evictions/) but it has now been finalised. Read the rest of this entry »
Imran Anjum is a human rights defender from the city of Sahiwal, Punjab province in Pakistan. He is the Founder and the Executive Director of Peaceful & Active Center for Humanity (PEACH), a non-governmental organisation working on the social and economic development of some of the most disadvantaged communities in Pakistan. Imran Anjum is directly involved in the provision of legal aid to people from these communities and carries out advocacy work on the rights of bonded labourers, including child labourers and brick kiln workers. Currently, PEACH is running a campaign across the Punjab province aimed at raising awareness among brick kiln workers about their rights.
On 20 May 2016, a group of brick kiln owners displayed banners around the city of Gojra, Punjab province, calling human rights defender Mr Imran Anjum ‘a blasphemer‘ and insisting on his execution. These threats follow an attack on 9 May 2016, when Imran Anjum, along with two of his colleagues, was travelling home to Sahiwal from a conference in Gojra devoted to the protection of the rights of brick kiln workers. Two people on motorbikes chased his car, forcibly stopped him, dragged him and his colleagues out of the vehicle and threatened them at gunpoint. They said that they would kill the human rights defender and his colleagues if they did not stop their labour rights work or if they went back to Gojra.
https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/case/case-history-imran-anjum
reports that on 25 May 2016, the Anti-Corruption Commission of Bangladesh (ACC) questioned human rights defender Mr Adilur Rahman Khan over an allegation of involvement of the human rights organisation Odhikar in money laundering. Similarly the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the OMCT and FIDH called on 26 May for urgent intervention to step up campaigns in his support.
Adilur Rahman Khan [https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/profile/adilur-rahman-khan] is an Advocate of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, and founder and Secretary of Odhikar. The human rights organisation was established in 1994 with the aim to advance the civil, political, social and economic rights of the citizens of Bangladesh, and to create a wider monitoring and awareness-raising system on the abuse of these rights. Odhikar also carries out advocacy to address the current human rights situation in the country, provides trainings for human rights defenders and conducts fact-finding missions in rural areas of Bangladesh. Adilur was a Final Nominee for the MEA in 2015.
As the links below show it is clearly a case of administrative and judicial harassment against the human rights organisation Odhikar and its Secretary in a further attempt to sanction and silence their human rights activities.
[On 25 May 2016, the ACC’s Deputy Director Mr Jalal Uddin Ahmed questioned Adilur Rahman Khan over Odhikar’s alleged involvement in money laundering as a part of an investigation opened in 2013. The Deputy Director informed the human rights defender that the inquiry into the allegation related to the the sum of € 97 000 that the ACC supposed had been deposited to the Standard Chartered Bank account of Odhikar, as part of money laundering activities. Adilur Rahman Khan denied all accusations made against Odhikar. He explained that the sum of €97 501,07 available on the organisation’s bank account was part of a contribution made by the European Union (EU) to help Odhikar implement a three-year project titled ‘Education on the Convention against Torture (CAT) and Official Protocol to the CAT Awareness Program in Bangladesh’, from 2012 to 2014.]
Also on 27 May the Asian Human Rights Commission published a press release about the members of families of 19 disappeared victims who once again took to the street 26 May 2016. They formed a “human chain” in front of the National Press Club in Dhaka to demand the return of their loved ones within the month of Ramadan. Prominent human rights defenders, members of the civil society, and academic scholars joined the families to express solidarity.
http://odhikar.org/human-rights-monitoring-report-may-2016/
http://www.omct.org/human-rights-defenders/urgent-interventions/bangladesh/2016/05/d23782/
http://www.humanrights.asia/news/press-releases/AHRC-PRL-013-2016
for other posts on Odhikar see: https://thoolen.wordpress.com/tag/odhikar/
Attacks on higher education threaten the safety and well-being of scholars, administrators, staff and students; undermine academic work and instruction; and deny everyone the benefits of expert knowledge and scientific and creative progress. Too often such attacks go unreported. Scholars at Risk (SAR) publishes an Academic Freedom Monitor which tracks key attacks with the aims of protecting vulnerable individuals, promoting accountability and preventing future violations. In the period February – April 2016 SAR reports 20 incidents:
On Wednesday 25 May 2016 Azerbaijan finally released investigative journalist Khadijah Ismayilova [https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2015/12/18/azerbaijan-khadija-ismayilova-remains-in-jail-but-council-of-europe-takes-exceptional-step/] after a number of other human rights defenders were released bit by bit over the last months. Ismayilova was serving a seven-and-a-half year sentence on charges which included embezzlement, illegal business activities and tax evasion. The Supreme Court has now amended her imprisonment to 3 1/2 years of suspended sentence and released her from prison. She vowed to continue to fight to clear her name. “I will continue to fight until complete acquittal,” Ismayilova told reporters after her release. “I will also continue to work as a journalist.” The British-Lebanese lawyer Amal Clooney is representing Khadija Ismayilova at the European Court of Human Rights.
As an independent reporter and journalist of the Azerbaijani radio Azadliq (“Radio Freedom”) she has shown great courage (see: https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2014/12/11/khadija-ismayilova-azerbaijan-is-not-deterred/), and received several international prizes, such as the 2015 Alison Des Forges Award for Extraordinary Activism (HRW), the 2015 Freedom to Write Award, the 2012 Fritt Ord/Zeit Press Prize, and the 2012 Courage of Journalism Award by the Washington-based International Women’s Media Foundation.
Although there are still human rights defenders and journalists in prison, Azerbaijan provides a fine example of how awards and the combined international pressure from a variety of sources (States, NGOs and international organizations) can have an impact:
https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2016/03/18/azerbaijan-pardon-jafarov-ismayilova-aliyev/
Source:
Reuters – Azerbaijan frees journalist whose case raised outcry in West
https://www.cpj.org/2016/05/-azerbaijani-reporter-khadija-ismayilova-ordered-r.php
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 