The University of Michigan’s 2016/17 Wallenberg Medal has been awarded to civil rights lawyer and social justice activist Bryan Stevenson. He is the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, an organization he founded in 1989 that focuses on social justice and human rights in the context of criminal justice reform in the United States. EJI litigates on behalf of condemned prisoners, juvenile offenders, people wrongly convicted or charged, poor people denied effective representation, and others whose trials are marked by racial bias or prosecutorial misconduct. Under Stevenson’s direction, EJI has handled hundreds of cases and spared the lives of 125 death row prisoners. Stevenson’s arguments have convinced the U.S. Supreme Court that juveniles in non-homicide cases may not be sentenced to life without parole. He is creating a memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, to commemorate the more than 4,000 persons who were lynched in 12 southern states between 1871 and 1950.
Stevenson is a professor of law at New York University, where he prepares students to consider the legal needs of those in resource-deprived regions. He has been a visiting professor of law at the U-M Law School. He wrote the prize-winning book “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption” and has won numerous awards and honors, including Reebok Award (1989), the Gleitsman Award (2000). the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Award Prize, the ACLU National Medal of Liberty, the Olaf Palme Prize for international human rights (2000), the Gruber Prize for International Justice (2009) and the Ford Foundation Visionaries Award.
Raoul Wallenberg was a 1935 graduate of U-M’s College of Architecture. As a Swedish diplomat Wallenberg saved the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews near the end of World War II.
NOTE: There are at least two other awards with Wallenberg in the title:
Raoul Wallenberg Prize (Council of Europe )
Raoul Wallenberg and Civic Courage Awards (USA), and there is
the Raoul Wallenberg Institute (Lund, Sweden)
The ceremony for Stevenson will take place on 7 March, 2017; after the medal presentation, Stevenson will give the 25th Wallenberg Lecture.
A lawyer, Willie Kimani, his client, Josphat Mwenda and their taxi driver, Joseph Muiruri, were last seen returning from a traffic court hearing at Mavoko Law Courts on 23 June 2016. Many feared that they were abducted. Now, on 1 July 2016 their bodies have been found. Kimani was a lawyer with NGO International Justice Mission in Kenya. Kimani had been representing Mwenda in a case he had brought against the police after he was shot by them during a traffic stop.
“We are deeply saddened by reports of the murders of Kimani, his client, and his taxi driver, and offer our condolences to their families and colleagues who continue to incur great risk fighting for justice and accountability,” said Human Rights First’s President and CEO Elisa Massimino. “It’s vital for the future of Kenya that its human rights lawyers are able to operate without fear of violence, and that the killers be swiftly brought to justice.”
“Police should not hesitate to interrogate and arrest their own officers when there is cause,” said Namwaya of HRW. “This case stands as a clear threat to the legal profession and all those who push for police accountability in Kenya.” http://www.hrw.org/africa/kenya
Chinese human rights lawyer Wang Yu poses during an interview in Hong Kong, March 20, 2014. – AFP
Radio Free Asia reported on 6 June 2016 that detained (on suspicion of “subversion of state power”) lawyer Wang Yu was awarded the prestigious Ludovic Trarieux Prize in Athens on Saturday. [for more info on award see: http://www.brandsaviors.com/thedigest/award/ludovic-trarieux-international-human-rights-prize]. The jury said it wanted to “hail the courage” of a woman who “decided that she could no longer keep her mouth shut,” founder Bernard Favreau said. “She chose to expose herself to dangers in order to defend the rights of women, children and persecuted minorities,” he told Agence France-Presse.
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.]
On 5 June 2016, in a joint letterHuman Rights Watch, Amnesty International, China Aid, Freedom House, Human Rights in China, Initiatives for China, International Campaign for Tibet, Reporters without Borders, Uyghur Human Rights Project, and World Uygur Congress – urged the US to:
Meet with representatives of civil society in China during or immediately after the meeting;
Press Chinese counterparts to repeal or bring into line with international law new national security laws, including the Counterterrorism and the Foreign Non-Governmental Management laws;
Publicly call for the release of specific individuals detained for peacefully exercising their rights; and
Publicly discuss US concerns about growing restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression and religion, among others.
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”
This blog features regularly profiles of human rights defenders. This time slightly different: a profile by a human rights defender. Rupert Abbottwho has worked several years in Cambodia. He spoke with Brent Crane and the interview appeared in the Phnom Penh Post of 20 May 2016 under the title: “MY PHNOM PENH”.
Rupert Abbott has worked at the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, for the UN at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal and as the deputy Asia Pacific director of AI
reports that on 16 May 2016, human rights defender Mr Guleid Ahmed Jama received notification from the Somaliland Minister of Justice and Judicial Affairs that his licence to practice law had been terminated. Guleid Ahmed Jama [for profile see: https://frontlinedefenders.org/en/profile/guleid-ahmad-jama] is a lawyer and founder of the Human Rights Center, a human rights watchdog organisation in Somaliland.
He only learned about this when he saw on 16 May a letter (dated 10 April!) which was circulated to members of the Somaliland judiciary from the Minister of Justice and Judicial Affairs, Minister Ahmed Farah Adarre, requesting that the judiciary cease to allow Guleid Ahmed Jama to practice law, as his position as chairperson of the HRC and his work as a lawyer are incompatible. [The termination of the licence by the Minister of Justice is unprecedented as the duty of licensing permissions falls within the mandate of the Advocates Licensing and Disciplining Commission.]
Earlier harassment against him occurred in April 2015 when he was arrested, charged and detained in Hargeisa while working in his capacity as a lawyer at Hargeisa Regional Court. He was accused of ‘subversive or anti-national propaganda’, ‘instigation to disobey the laws’, ‘intimidation of the public’ and ‘publication or circulation of false, exaggerated and tendentious news capable of disturbing public order’. According to the Office of the Attorney General, the human rights defender had allegedly committed these offences through his work at the HRC. This case was later closed. <https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/case/case-history-guleid-ahmed-jama>
Seems to me to be a good case for (international) lawyers organizations.
On 12 May 2016 Democracy Now remembered Michael Ratner, a human rights lawyer who fought for Justice from Attica to Guantánamo, and who died on 11 May 2016 at the age of 72. For over four decades, he defended, investigated and spoke up for victims of human rights abuses across the world. Ratner served as the longtime president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. In 2002, the center brought the first case against the George W. Bush administration for the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo. The Supreme Court eventually sided with the center in a landmark 2008 decision when it struck down the law that stripped Guantánamo prisoners of their habeas corpus rights. Ratner began working on Guantánamo in the 1990s, when he fought the first Bush administration’s use of the military base to house Haitian refugees. In 2008 he was the recipient of the William J. Butler Medal for Human Rights and in 2007 he was awarded the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship.
The link below gives also access to an interesting radio interview he did in 2007.
Azerbaijan’s Supreme Court has commuted a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence against prominent human rights lawyer Intigam Aliyev, paving the way for his release after nearly a year in prison
On 7 April 2016 Azerbaijan human rights lawyer Intigam Aliyev was awarded the Civil Rights Defender of the Year Award in Stockholm by the NGO Civil Rights Defender. Released in March (see: https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2016/03/28/human-rights-defender-intigam-aliyev-freed-in-azerbaijan-today/) his son Najmin Kamil came to accept the award and said, “My father dedicated his tireless and selfless work to the promotion and protection of human rights, and sacrificed his freedom for the freedom of others – just because it is important for him to stand strong for what he believes in, no matter the circumstances”.
Having paid so much attention to Azerbaijan in the past years [https://thoolen.wordpress.com/tag/azerbaijan/] it would be almost unfair not to mention that the Supreme Court in Baku today released Azerbaijan’s leading human rights lawyer, Intigam Aliyev. The court converted his seven-and-a-half year prison sentence to a five-year suspended term.
[Aliyev, an award winning human rights lawyer is also chair of the Legal Education Society, which litigated human rights cases in Azerbaijan. He was one of the first Azerbaijani lawyers to bring cases to the European Court of Human Rights and has mentored a new generation of human rights lawyers in the country. In April 2015, Baku’s Grave Crimes Court convicted Aliyev on politically motivated charges of tax evasion, illegal business activities, embezzlement, and abuse of authority.]
It is good that an important newspaper in the US (the New York Times of 5 January 2016) carries a op-ed about the situation of human rights defenders in Israel. Under the title “Israel’s Human Rights Activists Aren’t Traitors“, Michael Sfardjan argues that smear attacks by ultra-nationalists on human rights campaigners have sunk to new lows. Michael Sfardjan is an Israeli human rights lawyer who serves as legal adviser to the Israeli organizations Breaking the Silence, Yesh Din and the Human Rights Defenders Fund. Here some long excerpts:
In the series Human Rights Defenders against Torture, OMCT published on 7 December “Nicaragua: Meet Vilma: Still not ready to stop fighting against torture in Nicaragua”. Vilma Núñez de Escorcia , 77, has been heading the Centro Nicaragüense de Derechos Humanos (CENIDH) for the past quarter of a century, assisting civil society’s underprivileged populations and building the capacity to protect and promote human rights. The first female magistrate in Nicaragua appointed Vice-President of the Supreme Court from 1979 to 1987, Vilma pegs her commitment to fighting for justice to the fact that she was born outside marriage - a terrible thing at that time, which meant that she was barred from the best religious secondary school and could not inherit as much as each of her “legitimate” siblings. She is now thankful for what she then considered as a “misfortune” as it made her realize how the legal system treated people differently. This realization made her want to train as a lawyer specializing in human rights and penal law. “I didn’t’ want anyone else to suffer discrimination so I chose to become a lawyer, to understand and stop it,” she explains.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 