“Defenders issued Card to local HRA” was the proud headline when Abdul Qadeer Dar, Executive Director of Voice of Victims and Chairman of the Peoples Rights Movement in Srinagar, Kashmir, received his card labeling him as a human rights defender. This announcement, dating back to April 2013, is just to illustrate how certain tools for human rights defenders work in practice. The Dublin-based NGO Frontline Defenders has been issuing ‘identity cards’ to local human rights defenders for years. The cards do not have legal status and do not empower the holders to represent Front Line defenders. The card is intended to demonstrate that its holder is human rights defender with whom front Line Defenders has a working relationship.
Camilo Ganga – pseudonym of a journalist living in Havana – reported that independent Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation[CCDHRN] recorded 5,301 politically-motivated arrests in [the first 11 months of] 2013 in Cuba. A slight fall on 2012 !!! Read the rest of this entry »
Only yesterday I referred to the action campaign in favor of garment workers in Cambodia, which mentions H&M as one of chains getting its clothes manufactured there, and today I see that Stockholm-based Civil Rights Defenders announces that it will receive SEK 4 million (appr. 450.000 Euro) from H&M to fund its ongoing human rights work and in particular to ensure assistance for vulnerable human rights defenders. No relation perhaps?
On 4 December 2013 I reported on the setback in the establishment of a focal point against reprisals in the United Nations. The disappointing vote in the Third Committee could theoretically have been reversed by the General Assembly but that miracle did not happen. On 19 December the General Assembly also put on hold a Human Rights Council initiative to strengthen the protection of human rights defenders from attacks and reprisals. A group of African States, together with China, Cuba, and Russia, successfully put forward a resolution to defer the appointment of a senior UN official tasked with coordinating the protection of human rights defenders. This is despite the Human Rights Council overwhelmingly passing a resolution in September calling on the UN Secretary-General to appoint ‘a United Nations-wide senior focal point’ to combat reprisals and intimidation.‘ The vote had a narrow margin of only three votes: 83 – 80.
[In the face of an African Group position, only two African States had the courage to abstain from the vote: Chad and Morocco.]
While we were celebrating the New Year, Cambodian garment workers protesting for a rise in wages faced a violent police crackdown on 2 January 2014. Freedom Park in Phnom Penh was forcibly cleared by police and mass actions are now banned from the site. Violent crackdowns were instigated by Cambodian military when workers of the Yak Jin factory held a protest asking for a salary increase. Soldiers threatened protesters with “metal pipes, knives, AK47 rifles, slingshots and batons” and arrested 10 people, including monks and human rights defenders. On 3 January, protesters rallied at the Canadia industrial park and were met with live ammunition, teargas and grenades, leading to a violent clash that ended in 4 dead and 21 wounded. In all, 23 people have been arrested, their location unknown.
[Cambodia’s garment industry comprises 500,000 workers, a majority of whom are women from the rural areas. It provides products for western brands such as H&M, Adidas, GAP, and Walmart. Some of the factories are Korean-owned.]
A group of NGOs is organizing a Week of Action at international level. For more info write to apwld[at]apwld.org – a campaign kit will be available at apwld.org
Samir Goswami, managing director of AI USA’s Individuals and Communities at Risk Program, and Mark Cooke, chief innovation officer at Tax Management Associates, wrote a piece about how ‘big data’ can help human rights rather than just violate them. The piece is worth reading but falls short of being convincing. The better prediction of human rights violations which may [!] result from the analysis of a huge amount of data would of course be welcome but I remain unconvinced that it would therefore lead to a reduction of actual violations. Too many of these are planned and willful, while the mobilization of shame and international solidarity would be less forthcoming for violations that MAY occur. The authors are not the first to state that prevention is better than cure but the current problem is no so much a lack of predictive knowledge as a weakness of curing intervention. Still, the article is worth reading as it describes developments that are likely to come about anyway. Read the rest of this entry »
Dan Beeton of the Center for Economic and Policy Research reported on 3 January 2014 that Colonel German Alfaro, the commander of Operation Xatruch III in Honduras’ Aguan Valley, personally denounced Annie Bird, co-director of the U.S. and Canada-based human rights NGO Rights Action, on TV and radio, alleging among other things that she is engaging in “destabilization work” in the Aguan. The accusations came just after Bird accompanied campesinos in the Aguan to the Attorney General’s office to file human rights complaints, including some against Honduran soldiers. Alfaro also said he was opening an investigation into Bird’s activities. In response, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and another 33 human rights, labor and religious organizations called on the US State Department to denounce Alfaro’s comments. Read the rest of this entry »
We start the year with a little survey of what New Tactics in Human Rights accomplished in 2013: they trained 114 human rights defenders from the Middle East and North Africa [MENA region] on Strategic Effectiveness method and expanded their capacity in the MENA region for training and mentorship for human rights defenders. New material, including 20 new human rights tactics, were added to the website and there is now a French-language landing page. New Tactics also launched an Arabic version of its website and online community. In the Arabic-language community, it hosted 6 online conversations that engaged 60 human rights defenders from around the MENA region. In its English-language community, it hosted 10 online conversation that engaged 153 human rights defenders. Summaries of all of these conversations can be found on its website. In 2014 it will launch its New Tactics Strategy Toolkit, an online collection of tools to help defenders create effective strategies.
To illustrate the increased use of video and images in the human rights world, just scroll down and get a feel of the amount and variety through some examples, mostly from the end of this year:
Human Rights Watch produced an end-of-year 2013 overview.
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is announces the latest issue of its weekly video news bulletin (episode number 10).
Amnesty International used a slick production to get attention for the fate of Syrian refugees in Europe (not explaining why other regions are not targeted by the way).
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights used this video to address the world on Human Rights Day 2013;
On Human Rights Day, US-based Freedom House recognized the work of HRDs in the Eurasia region with a slide show on:Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan.
The International Service for Human Rights in Geneva presents its work with a video.
Human Rights First used YouTube to announce its fundraising live stream for the end of the year.
There are of course many more examples, quite a few referred to in this blog over the years, such as those of the MEA: http://www.martinennalsaward.org/ but a special mention should be made of
the organisation Witnessin the USA which has pioneered the use of video cameras in the hands of human rights defenders.
When the internet some 25 years ago made it possible to send and ‘publish’ almost unlimited amounts texts, the original euphoria in the human rights movement (whose main weapon is after all documentation) was quickly dampened somewhat when it also led to information overkill. Something similar is bound to happen with images which can now be ‘published’ and transmitted as easily as documents (but without the free-text search capacity). On the other hand there will be new possibilities and different ways of getting the human rights ‘stories’ across, especially on mobile devices used increasingly by younger generations.
The True Heroes Foundation– of which I am a founding Board member – wants to follow and use this development in a way that Human Rights Defenders derive maximum benefit from the new information and communication technology. It hopes to do so by making stories and images of HRDs the most eminent entry point for those seeking information on human rights in the near future. Keep following this blog and the website www.trueheroesfilms.org in the coming year for ….I am afraid …yet MORE information!!
With these thoughts, I WISH YOU ALL THE BEST FOR 2014.
While we were celebrating the New Year, Cambodian garment workers protesting for a rise in wages faced a violent police crackdown on 2 January 2014. Freedom Park in Phnom Penh was forcibly cleared by police and mass actions are now banned from the site. Violent crackdowns were instigated by Cambodian military when workers of the Yak Jin factory held a protest asking for a salary increase. Soldiers threatened protesters with “metal pipes, knives, AK47 rifles, slingshots and batons” and arrested 10 people, including monks and human rights defenders. On 3 January, protesters rallied at the Canadia industrial park and were met with live ammunition, teargas and grenades, leading to a violent clash that ended in 4 dead and 21 wounded. In all, 23 people have been arrested, their location unknown.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 