share information on human rights defenders, with special focus on human rights awards and laureates
The Ceremony of the Alkarama Award will be held on Friday 7 December 2012 at 18h30 in Geneva at Centre International Conférences, Genève
This year, the laureates are two human rights defenders from the Gulf region:
– Dr Mohamed Abdullah Al Roken, United Arab Emirates
– Dr Saud Mukhtar Al Hashimi, Saudi Arabia.
For more information: http://www.alkarama.org
award@alkarama.org
+41 22 734 10 06
PBI UK put on VIMEO an interesting panel discussion on Women Human Rights Defenders. It is over an hour long and you need good broadband access to see it properly.
Panellists:
Chair: Dr Sarah Wollaston MP (5 mins)
1. Jivka Petkova, Gender Advisor on Human Rights and Democracy, European External Action Service. “Protecting and supporting WHRDs through the EU.”
2. Dolores Infante, Assistant to the UN Special Rapporteur on HRDs. “An overview of the work of the Special Rapporteur’s office on addressing risks faced by WHRDs.”
3. Kathryn Lockett, Advisor, Violence Against Women and Girls, Conflict, Humanitarian and Security Department, DFID. “DFID’s work on tackling Violence Against Women and Girls: the role of WHRDs”.
4. Amy Clemitshaw, Deputy Head of Human Rights and Democracy Department, FCO. “The UK’s use of the EU human rights guidelines overseas to support human rights defenders.”
Panel 1 – Women human rights defenders: Empowering and protecting the change-makers on Vimeo on Vimeo
On 19 November 2012, human rights defender and poet Mr Li Bifeng was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment by Shehong County People’s Court in Sichuan province on charges of ‘contract fraud’. Li Bifeng has previously served two terms in prison on account of his activities in defence of human rights. It is believed he has been targeted because of his association with fellow human rights defender and writer Mr Liao Yiwu, who fled China in 2011. The charges of ‘contract fraud’, which have been described as groundless by Li Bifeng’s lawyers, reportedly relate to a property transaction with an alcohol company whereby Li Bifeng, as a businessman, undertook to sell apartments on Hainan Island. According to his wife, Ms Jiang Xia, once the apartments were sold, he was sued by the company for fraud. The company claims that it is owed two million yuan as a result of the sales agreement.
Li Bifeng is a close friend of Liao Yiwu who secretly fled China in 2011 after being denied an exit visa 17 times. Liao Yiwu, now based in Germany, reports that Li Bifeng was targeted because the Chinese authorities believe he provided the financial support that made possible Liao Yiwu’s escape from China, which Liao Yiwu has denied. Li Bifeng was detained on 12 September 2011, two months after Liao Yiwu went into exile in Germany.
United Nations Special Rapporteur Margaret Sekaggya will visit Ireland from 19 to 23 November 2012 to evaluate the situation of human rights defenders in the country. This is the first official mission to a European Union member State by an expert mandated to assess and report on the situation of rights defenders. The UN independent expert pointed out that the coming mission “represents a unique opportunity to provide observations and recommendations on Ireland’s legal framework, institutions and other factors influencing the environment in which defenders work.”
Ms. Sekaggya, who is visiting the country at the invitation of the Irish authorities, is scheduled to meet with Government officials, representatives of the legislative and judicial branches, the Irish Human Rights Commission, a broad range of civil society actors and the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees. The human rights expert will hold a press conference in Dublin at the Buswells Hotel on Friday, 23 November 2012 at 11:30.
via DisplayNews
An excellent post in Davao Today by MARILOU AGUIRRE-TUBURAN highlights the life-threatening dangers to those who oppose land grabbing or destruction of the environment as well as the quasi-total impunity for the perpetrators.
She relates how Stella Matutina, a nun leading Mindanao’s environmentalists, demonstrates that trying to stop giant mining firms has become deadlier. Speaking during a public hearing initiated by Philippine legislators last week, Matutina rattled off glaring statistics to present what she termed as “the most salient and gravest trends” in human rights abuses under the Aquino government.
The numbers of slain victims were punishing: 32 leaders killed in two years, 24 of them indigenous peoples who opposed land grabbing in their ancestral domains. The numbers of victims sued by courts were deplorable: 159 individuals who face pending warrants of arrests, subpoenas, and other forms of “legal harassment and intimidation.” The numbers of displaced residents were glaring: about 1,017 families with 5,275 individuals, particularly in the regions of Caraga, Northern and Southern Mindanao, dislocated due to military encampments and operations. In all these, Matuina, convenor of the coalition, Panalipdan (English translation: Defend) Mindanao, lamented that “the state of impunity continues to this day.”
The “state of impunity” was coined by rights activists following the carnage notoriously known as Ampatuan massacre involving the murder of 58 individuals, 34 of them media practitioners in Maguindanao province three years ago. Impunity, the activists say, because perpetrators remain scot-free, if not, unpunished. Matutina added that extrajudicial killings, particularly of indigenous leaders and environment advocates in Mindanao, escalated “at a faster pace, compared to the same period under (former President Gloria) Arroyo.” A human rights victim herself, Matutina said her experience from the hands of the military was “of no consequence compared to the fate that befell other victims of human rights violations across Mindanao.” Three years ago, Matutina, dead-tired from a day of environment seminar with residents, was rudely woken from sleep and detained for several hours by soldiers belonging to the Philippine Army’s 67th Infantry Battalion in a far-flung village in Cateel town, Davao Oriental. Soldiers tagged her as a New People’s Army rebel, an accusation which Matutina brushed off as part of her “determined advocacy” in protecting communities and the environment.
for the full story see: http://davaotoday.com/main/2012/11/16/for-love-of-environment-advocates-pay-dearly/
On 14 November 2012, the family of human rights defender Mr Antonio González Rodiles were informed that the human rights defender is to be charged with ‘resistance to authority‘, as he remains in provisional detention. The human rights defender was arrested in Havana in a wave of police beatings and arrests of human rights defenders on 7 and 8 November 2012. Antonio González Rodiles is the head of Estado de SATS, an independent project that aims to create a space for participation and debate through panel discussions, forums and other events that are filmed and broadcast on the Internet. On 7 November 2012, another human rights defender Ms Yaremis Flores was arrested in connection with news articles in which she was critical of the Government’s response to Hurricane Sandy, as well reporting on deaths of prisoners in detention. As human rights defenders gathered at the police station to protest her detention, a number of others were also beaten up and arrested, including Antonio González Rodiles and Ms Laritza Diversent, lawyer and blogger. On 8 November 2012, blogger Ms Yoani Sanchez, blogger and writer Mr Ángel Santiesteban Prats, Mr Angel Moya Acosta, Mr Julio Aleaga, Mr Librado Linares, Mr Félix Navarro, Mr Iván Hernández Carrillo, Mr Eduardo Díaz Fleites and Mr Guillermo Fariñas Hernández were all arrested as they called for the release of those arrested on the previous day. In Camagüey, four more human rights defenders were detained and six further individuals arrested when they made their way to the police station to demand their release. After several days in detention, they were released, as were all of the human rights defenders held in Havana. However, Antonio González Rodiles remains in detention and members of his family were informed that the Public Prosecutor has requested that he be held in provisional detention on charges of resistance to authority, a charge that carries a sentence of between three months and one year in prison.
Many of those arrested are members of the “Demanda ciudadana por otra Cuba” (Citizens’ Demand for Another Cuba) campaign. A meeting of the group was to be held in Antonio González Rodiles’ home. The campaign is calling on the Cuban Government to immediately put into practice the legal and political guarantees endorsed in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, through the ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which the Cuban authorities signed in February 2008. In August 2012 the document “Demanda ciudadana por otra Cuba” was signed by hundreds of Cubans around the island and the diaspora, and then delivered to the headquarters of the National Assembly.
The NGO Front Line Defenders believes that the arrests of the aforementioned human rights defenders and the continued detention of Antonio González Rodiles are directly related to their legitimate and peaceful work in defence of human rights. The regular prevention of peaceful gatherings by police, who block off access to the venues on the date of planned events, constitutes a clear denial of the right to freedom of assembly in Cuba. In addition, human rights defenders continue to face harassment and physical attacks from police around the island.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Human rights campaigners say no dissidents are among prisoners to be released in ‘goodwill gesture’ reports Jason Burke in Delhi (guardian.co.uk, Thursday 15 November 2012)
The Guardian and many other newspapers have announced that the Burmese authorities have freed more than 450 detainees in a goodwill gesture before a historic visit by the US president Obama but local and international human rights campaigners said the list of released prisoners did not include any political dissidents.
Announcing the amnesty – the latest in a series that have coincided with high-profile visits of foreign dignitaries or trips by senior Burmese leaders overseas – state media said late on Wednesday that its aim was “to help promote goodwill and the bilateral relationship”. A home ministry official told Reuters that a certain number of the remaining 300 political prisoners would be released. However Bo Kyi, of the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), said no prisoners of conscience had been freed so far. “All are common criminals or foreign nationals …… We know of no political prisoners among the 452 freed today,” he said.
However the Wall Street Journal (15 Nov) just reported that U Myint Aye, a 61-year-old human rights activists and one of the most high-profile dissidents currently detained, held at Loikaw, was included.
No word on Aung Naing either (see my post of 24 September this year).
Let’s wait and see whether President Obama is willing to press for a more substantive release.
The case I referred to yesterday of the three Zimbabwean human rights defenders, who were detained on 5 November and illegally transferred between Harare and Bulawayo on 7 November, has seen some improvement.
They were charged and released on bail on the afternoon of 8 November 2012.
Protection International announces the 2nd edition of its “Postgraduate Diploma on Integral Protection for Human Rights Defenders and Social Activists”.
It will begin in January 2013. It is organised jointly with the Universidad Pablo de Olavide.
This Diploma is the first of its kind, since it is the only international Postgraduate Diploma addressing the need to protect defenders.
The course addresses that protection in a comprehensive way, covering the existing national, international and regional laws and protection mechanisms; also studying security management, psychosocial support, the design of protection programs, etc. The course will also include an introduction to the protection of witnesses and victims.
The two institutions running it are:
– The Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain) which has been offering Post-graduate education in human rights for many years, and has introduced to the university the critical theory of human rights.
– Protection International (Brussels) which offers an extensive experience working directly for the protection of defenders in over fifteen countries in Africa, Asia, America and Europe.
Directors: Rosario Valpuesta Fernández and Luis Enrique Eguren
Dates: January 2013 – July 2013
Credits: 30 ECTS
Enrolment fees: 800 Euros (certificate fees not included)
Pre-registration and enrolment: Online
Languages used during the training process: Spanish or English
In a letter to the editor of the Guardian of 8 November 2012, Andrew Lovatt puts the question very clearly:
Countries that sell arms to states that have repeatedly violated the human rights of their people should receive universal condemnation from their own citizens for the role they play in furthering the misery and bloodshed around the globe, and Britain’s sale of fighter jets to Saudi Arabia and the UAE should be no exception. Human Rights Watch has reported numerous human rights abuses conducted by both states, which have included the assault and intimidation of nonviolent human rights defenders, political activists and civil society actors in an attempt to suppress freedom of expression and protect the regimes from democratic change.
Britain’s long-standing international support for democracy and human rights has already been undermined by the sale of 72 Typhoons to Saudi Arabia. Should Britain prop up these oppressive states further by putting an extra £6bn worth of military hardware into their hands, its position will rightly be viewed as hypocritical by the rest of the world.
Andrew Lovatt
Market Drayton, Shropshire
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 