Julian Borger in the Guardian of 4 May 2023 tells how an NGO teams up with Hollywood to sharpen human rights focus.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has decided to take on Hollywood to improve the visibility and awareness of humanitarian issues in popular culture. As part of the move, the advocacy group has signed up with a talent agent firm, Activist Artists Management (AAM), to provide “scripted and unscripted content in film and television”, an HRW statement said…
The group has set up a department of three staff and additional consultants, to deal with Hollywood full-time – advising writers and directors on incorporating realistic treatment of human rights issues into their work.
“We’re excited to work with Hollywood to spread that message and equip committed activists, advocates and artists standing up for justice through the stories they tell,” said Tirana Hassan, HRW’s new executive director.
Amanda Alampi, the organisation’s director of campaigns and public engagement, argued it was a logical step towards deepening the impact of HRW’s investigative work. “We have consistently done human rights investigations and told real-life stories to try to put a human face on it. But increasingly, we think that scripted storytelling is going to be really important in this area,” Alampi said. “So what we’re trying to do is think about – how do we insert a positive human rights message into popular culture? And Hollywood seems like a great place to start.”
She said one way HRW would try to wield influence is to work with producers and writers “to encourage them to think about human rights to choose to tell stories more responsibly” in movie projects already in the pipeline.
“Then a second area is really about whether we can pitch story ideas that would actually tell effective human rights stories,” Alampi added. “We already use our meticulous fact-finding to sway policymakers and put perpetrators in the dock. This is about reaching a broader public with stories that illustrate human rights issues – especially through unexpected storytellers and platforms, like space or superheroes.”..
Alampi argued that allowing Hollywood to script and fictionalise true stories would not impinge on HRW’s reputation for factual accuracy, because the group would not be central to creating the fiction, but would simply pass on ideas that could be a starting point for movies with a human rights message.
“This is not about getting attention for HRW or getting us into a story, it’s about seeding human rights through effective storytelling, so I don’t think that’s a concern,” Alampi said. “Often our work in entertainment advocacy is focused on being a connector between our partners, impacted people and storytellers who could help share those stories with wider audiences.”
Bernie Cahill, an AAM founding partner, said: “Activist is honored to partner with Human Rights Watch to amplify the important stories of its decades-long fight for justice, dignity, compassion and equality for people everywhere.”
Tirana Hassan, a lawyer and veteran human rights investigator who has documented human rights abuses throughout crises and conflicts globally, has been named the next executive director of Human Rights Watch, the organization announced. Hassan was previously the Human Rights Watch chief programs officer and had been serving as acting executive director since September 2022, following the departure of its long-time leader, Kenneth Roth.
“As new executive director of Human Rights Watch, Tirana Hassan brings impeccable credentials as a human rights practitioner and an ambitious vision for human rights solutions to the challenges the world is facing,” said Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, CEO and president of the International Peace Institute and the former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. “A hugely experienced activist, Tirana will be a formidable leader and very much a force to be reckoned with!”
With decades of experience in the human rights and humanitarian fields, Hassan, who began her career as a social worker and spent many years working with women and children in conflict and crisis situations, first joined Human Rights Watch in 2010, covering emergencies across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. She went on to become Amnesty International’s director of crisis response before returning to Human Rights Watch as its chief programs officer in 2020, leading the organization’s research, advocacy, legal, and communications departments.
“Tirana has the rare combination of wide-ranging investigative experience, strategic creativity, and a deep commitment to human rights principle that Human Rights Watch needs to tackle the complex human rights challenges the world is facing,” said Kenneth Roth, former executive director at Human Rights Watch, who stepped down in August 2022. “I am thrilled that she will lead Human Rights Watch into the future.”
When she headed Amnesty International’s crisis team, Hassan oversaw the development of innovative uses of technology to advance human rights investigations in Myanmar, Syria, and other crisis areas. She brings a proven track record of developing ambitious programs to address critical human rights issues and will lead the Human Rights Watch’s work with activists, survivors, and civil society to head off the rising threats to human rights around the world.
One of Hassan’s priorities will be to call out government selective applications of human rights obligations. The swift and bold response to the crisis in Ukraine including a UN Human Rights Council commission of inquiry and multiple condemnations by the UN General Assembly – has shown what is possible when governments work together, while the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin shows that no one is beyond the reach of justice. However, the same governments have often at best responded in a lukewarm fashion or at worst turned a blind eye to the plight of other victims. Hassan will focus on using all possible levers to push governments to realize their legal obligations to victims everywhere, including in Afghanistan, Israel and Palestine, Ethiopia, and Iran.
Hassan was born in Singapore to a Pakistani father whose family left India during partition and a Malaysian-born Sri Lankan and Chinese mother. Her family resettled in Australia in the 1970s after her father’s academic research on Singapore’s housing policies triggered the ire of the government, which was cracking down on dissent. She has said family stories of racism, prejudice, and repression helped shape her world view and contributed to her decision to work on behalf of rights for dispossessed people.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree in social work from the University of South Australia, Hassan worked as a social worker in Los Angeles, London, and Adelaide, counseling homeless young people before obtaining a law degree from the University of Adelaide. During her last year of law school, she co-founded the Woomera Lawyers Group, a refugee advocacy organization that provided legal services to asylum seekers detained in Australia’s notorious desert detention center. She represented refugees and asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who were detained in the remote facility and later went on to work in the humanitarian sector. Hassan also holds a master’s degree in international human rights law from Oxford University.
“I’m honored and humbled to lead this exceptional organization at a moment when the defense of human rights feels more urgent than ever,” Hassan said. “I look forward to building on Human Rights Watch’s formidable foundation to uplift the human rights defenders we work with and the communities we serve to put pressure on those in power to realize a rights-respecting future for us all.”
Prosecutors in Thailand should immediately withdraw the criminal defamation cases brought by Thammakaset Company Ltd. against three prominent human rights defenders for their support of other activists facing criminal charges, Human Rights Watch said on 16 March 2023. The Thai government should act to repeal criminal defamation provisions and introduce strong safeguards to prevent the use of frivolous, vexatious, or malicious legal actions that would have chilling effects on free speech.
On March 14, 2023, the Bangkok South Criminal Court began the trial that involves 28 counts of alleged criminal defamation under Thailand’s Criminal Code sections 326 and 328. The charges stem from posts or re-posts on social media by Angkhana Neelapaijit, Puttanee Kangkun, and Thanaporn Saleephol expressing solidarity with other human rights defenders already facing lawsuits brought by Thammakaset for alleging labor rights abuses at the company’s chicken farm in Lopburi Province. The company has filed at least 37 civil and criminal cases against rights defenders, journalists, and workers since 2016.
“The Thai authorities should not help companies use criminal defamation or other legal avenues to silence workers from filing complaints about their working conditions or human rights defenders or journalists for reporting about alleged abuses at the company,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The charges against Angkhana, Puttanee, and Thanaporn should be immediately dropped, and Thai authorities should act to prevent similar cases from being filed in the future.”
The United Nations Human Rights Committee has stated in its General Comment No. 34 on freedom of expression that governments “should put in place effective measures to protect against attacks aimed at silencing those exercising their right to freedom of expression, including persons who engage in the gathering and analysis of information on the human rights situation who publish human rights-related reports.”
On December 16, 2022, the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights urged Thai authorities to take action to stop the Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation (SLAPP) lawsuits increasingly used by Thai companies to intimidate reporters and human rights advocates.
The Working Group specifically mentioned Thammakaset, stating that: “The cases filed by companies, such as Thammakaset Company Limited, against human rights defenders are a clear example of businesses abusing the legal system in order to censor, intimidate, and silence criticism through SLAPPs as a method of judicial harassment.” See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/04/28/eu-finally-moves-on-law-to-protect-media-from-legal-abuse-slapps/
Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha has repeatedly emphasized the importance of companies respecting human rights in their operations and upholding the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. In October 2019, Thailand was the first country in Asia to announce a National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights, committing to protect human rights defenders and prevent judicial harassment. But the charges against Angkhana, Puttanee, and Thanaporn, as well as the failure to assist those still facing many of the other civil and criminal cases filed by Thammakaset, stand in stark contradiction to the Thai government’s pledges to take action to protect rights, Human Rights Watch said.
In 2018, the National Assembly amended the Criminal Procedure Code to prevent the misuse of criminal cases. While that is a useful step, the Thai government should repeal all criminal defamation provisions. Neither prosecutors nor courts in Thailand have actually carried out, much less considered, amended section 161/1, which allows judges to dismiss and forbid the refiling of a criminal complaint by a private individual if the complaint is filed “in bad faith or with misrepresentation of facts to harass or take advantage of a defendant.” Furthermore, section 165/2 allows the presentation of evidence to show that the complaint “lacks merit.”
These reform provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code remain unused and untested, though. It is also crucial to provide prosecutors with adequate resources and support to exercise their powers under section 21 of the 2010 Public Prosecutor Organ and Public Prosecutors Act to screen out frivolous cases.
Human Rights Watch, along with an increasing number of governments and international agencies, has consistently called for the repeal of criminal defamation laws because they are an inherently disproportionate punishment for expressions of speech judged to damage reputations. Civil defamation laws, when supplemented by strong anti-SLAPP safeguards, balance the need for fair reporting in the public interest with concerns about reputational harm to private actors. In addition, as the charges against Angkhana, Puttanee, and Thanaporn show, criminal defamation laws in Thailand are easily abused and can have adverse impacts on free expression in the public interest.
Thailand should enact comprehensive anti-SLAPP legislation to strengthen safeguards to protect freedom of speech and expression and prevent retaliation against workers, human rights defenders, and journalists, Human Rights Watch said.
The UN special rapporteur on rights of freedom of peaceful assembly and association recommended that “States should protect and facilitate the rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association to ensure that these rights are enjoyed by everyone” including by “enacting anti-SLAPPs legislation, allowing an early dismissal (with an award of costs) of such suits and the use of measures to penalize abuse.”See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/strategic-lawsuits-against-public-participation-slapps/
“The UN and governments from around the world should share with Thailand their reform efforts to strengthen anti-SLAPP protections and point out that criminal defamation laws coupled with the absence of strong anti-SLAPP protections impede the ability of businesses to conduct essential human rights and environmental due diligence,” Pearson said. “Unless the Thai government moves now to protect Angkhana, Puttanee, and Thanaporn from retaliation, the promises that Thai officials made on business and human rights will ring hollow.”
On 7 March 2023 EuroMed Rights issued the following statement regarding the situation in Tunisia:
For several weeks now, Kaïs Saïed’s presidentialist regime has been conducting a relentless campaign of arrests, intimidation, denigration and targeted attacks against political opponents, journalists, trade unionists and civil society representatives, under the pretext of an alleged conspiracy to undermine state security, accusations of corruption or contacts with foreign diplomats. International trade union activists who have come to participate in activities of the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT), such as Esther Lynch, the General Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation, have been expelled and any other trade union representatives are now persona non grata in Tunisia.
“These arrests based on the crime of opinion and the widespread repression of freedom of expression in all its forms constitute a serious breach of the rule of law. They raise fears of a return to the practices of the authoritarian regime that preceded the January 2011 revolution. The national dialogue that the UGTT has initiated in partnership with the Tunisian League for Human Rights (LTDH), the National Bar Association and the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES), towards a roadmap to overcome the political, economic and social crisis, must be supported,” said Wadih Al-Asmar, President of EuroMed Rights.
A justice system at the orders
Accused of being “traitors” and “terrorists”, the opponents of the regime put in place, month after month, by President Kaïs Saïed since his power grab of 25 July 2021, are challenging the concentration of powers, in particular the supervision of the Ministry of Justice and the dismissal of many judges and prosecutors. Controlling the judicial power is a weapon that the Tunisian authorities no longer hesitate to use and abuse to silence critics.
“The rule of law in Tunisia is on the brink of collapse,” added Wadih Al-Asmar. “The presumption of innocence is being flouted. Moreover, to declare that anyone who exonerates those prosecuted would be considered an accomplice is a denial of the role and independence of judges and prosecutors. The ban on demonstrations and the desire to isolate Tunisian civil society from its international contacts are other symptoms of the regime’s autocratic drift.”
Attacks on migrants
On 21 February, President Kaïs Saïed continued his diatribe by calling for “urgent measures” against the “hordes” of sub-Saharan migrants, endorsing the conspiratorial theory of the “Great Replacement,” which asserts the existence of a plot to change the demographic composition of the country. As a result, racist and violent attacks, both official and unofficial, against migrants from sub-Saharan Africa continue, leading to arrests and deportations.
“Migrants have been expelled from their homes and fired from their jobs; children have been removed from their schools; women of sub-Saharan origin have been reportedly raped. Fear is growing among migrants who have been living in Tunisia, some for years, causing many families to leave the country to avoid facing violence,” said Rasmus Alenius Boserup, Executive Director of EuroMed Rights. “The European Union and its Member States, in their bilateral relations with Tunisia, must make clear that arbitrary repression and incitement to racial hatred are unacceptable, and should express solidarity with all those arrested, defamed and subjected to violence.”
Burundian authorities should immediately and unconditionally release five human rights defenders arbitrarily arrested on February 14, 2023, and drop the baseless charges against them, Amnesty International, the Burundi Human Rights Initiative, and Human Rights Watch said on 14 March 2023.
The five human rights defenders are accused of rebellion and of undermining internal state security and the functioning of public finances. The charges appear to relate only to their relationship with an international organization abroad and the funding they have received from this organization. Two of the defenders work for the Association of Women Lawyers in Burundi (Association des femmes juristes du Burundi, AFJB) and three for the Association for Peace and the Promotion of Human Rights in Burundi (Association pour la paix et la promotion des droits de l’Homme, APDH).
“The arrests of the five human rights defenders and the serious charges brought against them signal a worsening climate for independent civil society in Burundi,” said Clémentine de Montjoye, Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “If working in partnership with or receiving funding from international groups is treated as a criminal offense and a threat to state security, what little space was left for civil society to operate in Burundi will be closed.”
On February 16, Martin Niteretse, Minister of Interior, Community Development and Public Security, accused the organizations of working with an international nongovernmental organization. Intelligence agents arrested four of the defenders – Sonia Ndikumasabo, president, and Marie Emerusabe, general coordinator, of AFJB; Audace Havyarimana, legal representative, and Sylvana Inamahoro, executive director, of APDH – on February 14 at Bujumbura’s Melchior Ndadaye Airport as they were preparing to fly to Uganda for a meeting with partners.
Prosper Runyange, the APDH land project coordinator, was arrested in Ngozi on February 14 and transferred to Bujumbura the next day. The five defenders were held at the National Intelligence Service (Service national de renseignement, SNR) headquarters in Bujumbura, then transferred to Mpimba central prison in Bujumbura, on February 17. On March 2, the high court of Ntahangwa in Bujumbura confirmed their pretrial detention.
The two organizations work on gender-based violence and land rights and are officially registered in Burundi. They help some of the most marginalized groups in Burundian society. The judicial authorities’ decision to pursue prosecution of the defenders, apparently solely on the grounds of their organizations’ partnership with and funding from an international organization, has triggered fears of another civil society crackdown in Burundi and undermines the president’s stated reform agenda, the organizations said. In October 2018, the authorities suspended the activities of most foreign organizations in Burundi and forced them to re-register, which included submitting documentation that stated the ethnicity of their Burundian employees.
The government policy, based on a law on foreign nongovernmental organizations, adopted in January 2017, caused some international organizations to close their offices in Burundi because they disagreed with government-imposed ethnic quotas and objected to the requirement to provide information on the ethnicity of their staff. Some said they feared that submitting this information could put their employees at risk of ethnic profiling and targeting.
“The charges of endangering state security and rebellion against these five human rights defenders are absurd,” said Carina Tertsakian from the Burundi Human Rights Initiative. “If the authorities have questions about their sources of funding, these can be solved through normal administrative channels, as provided for by the law.”
During late President Pierre Nkurunziza’s third and final term, from 2015 to 2020, independent civil society and media were often targeted, and their members attacked, forcibly disappeared, detained, and threatened. Scores of human rights defenders and journalists fled the country and many remain in exile. There has been almost total impunity for these crimes.
Since President Évariste Ndayishimiye came to power in June 2020 and despite his promises to restore freedom of expression and association, the government’s hostility toward Burundi’s once thriving civil society and media remains. The arrests of the five rights defenders followed the conviction, on January 2, 2023, of an online journalist, Floriane Irangabiye, to 10 years in prison, on charges of “undermining the integrity of the national territory” in violation of her rights to free speech and to a fair trial.
These latest arrests and Irangabiye’s conviction reverse a brief moment of optimism after the acquittal and release, in December, of Tony Germain Nkina, a lawyer and former human rights defender who spent more than two years unjustly imprisoned on unsubstantiated charges of collaboration with a rebel group. Twelve human rights defenders and journalists in exile were convicted in June 2020 of participating in a May 2015 coup attempt. The verdict, which was only made public in February 2021, came after a deeply flawed trial during which the defendants were absent and did not have legal representation, flouting the most basic due process principles. The 12 were found guilty of “attacks on the authority of the State,” “assassinations,” and “destruction.”
The arrest of Ndikumasabo, Emerusabe, Havyarimana, Inamahoro, and Runyange appears to be designed to punish the human rights defenders and their organizations for collaborating with an international organization, obstruct their organizations’ activities, and intimidate other activists. Such behavior belies Burundian authorities’ claims that they respect human rights and further stains the image of openness and reform that they try to project internationally, the organizations said.
“Actions speak louder than words,” said Flavia Mwangovya, Deputy Regional Director at Amnesty International. “If the Burundian authorities want their human rights promises to be taken seriously, they should allow civil society to do its valuable work – including defending and assisting victims of human rights violations – without harassment.”
“Bahrain’s hosting of sporting and high-level international events is a transparent attempt to launder its decades-long campaign to crush political opposition and suffocate the country’s vibrant civil society,” said Tirana Hassan, Human Rights Watch’s acting executive director. “Its unilateral reversal of Human Rights Watch’s access to the IPU conference is a blatant example of its escalating repression. Governments, organizations with influence, and key officials should speak out loudly against Bahrain’s abuses so they are not complicit in its efforts to whitewash its horrific rights record.”
Bahrain is hosting the meeting of the IPU, a global organization of national parliaments, from March 11-15. The organization’s slogan is “For democracy. For everyone,” and the theme of the 146th Assembly is “Promoting peaceful coexistence and inclusive societies: Fighting intolerance.” These statements are in stark contrast to the extensive record of serious human rights abuses in Bahrain that Human Rights Watch and other rights organizations have documented, Human Rights Watch said. This includes the continued detention of the prominent human rights activist and Danish-Bahraini dual citizen Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja. Al-Khawaja is reportedly suffering serious health problems while being denied adequate medical care. He is this year’s laureate of the MEA [see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/abdul-hadi-al-khawaja/]
….. Two of Bahrain’s former parliament members are in prison for exercising their freedom of expression, and the government has forced many more into exile and stripped them of their citizenship.
On March 5, Bahrain hosted Formula One’s (F1) opening season race. Twenty-one groups, including Human Rights Watch, sent a letter to F1’s president to raise “serious concerns over F1’s ongoing role in ‘sportswashing’ amidst a deterioration in Bahrain’s human rights situation.” An F1 driver, Lewis Hamilton, recently said that he is “not sure [the human rights situation] has got better while we have been coming all these years” to countries like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
“With local civil society severely restricted by Bahrain’s autocratic government, members of the IPU Assembly should live up to its organizational values and speak out on behalf of Bahrain’s victims of repression,” Hassan said.
On 14 February, 2023 Louis Charbonneau, HRW United Nations Director, reported that the UN General Assembly achieved a funding breakthrough by agreeing to fully fund UN human rights mechanisms that China, Russia, and their allies had sought to defund in the 2023 budget. All these efforts failed. The Czech Republic as European Union president countered by proposing full funding for human rights mechanisms at the level proposed by Secretary-General António Guterres. The resolution passed by a sizable majority.
There’s more good news. Not only did the defunding efforts fail, but the highly problematic recommendations put forward by the UN Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions were rejected. The Advisory Committee is supposed to be an independent body of experts, but in recent years, its “experts” from countries like China and Russia have been pushing their governments’ anti-human rights agendas and advocating for sharp cuts in funding for human rights work, with no good reasons. Due to divisions between western countries and developing states, the standard UN funding compromise had become accepting the non-binding Advisory Committee recommendations. For example, if its recommendations had been adopted, the staff and budget for the Iran commission of inquiry would have been cut in half.
This should set a precedent for UN human rights funding in the future.
Eric Goldstein, Deputy Director, Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch, wrote on 8 February 2023 about the demise of Algeria’s first independent human rights league, and do so with a personal touch.
“Shortly after I started my first human rights job in 1986, Amnesty International issued an alert about a group of Algerians sentenced to up to three years in prison for creating the country’s first independent human rights league.” The league became a fixture of the transnational Arab human rights movement in the early 1990s. Those events came to mind as I learned of an Algerian court’s decision, issued in 2022 but made public in January 2023, to dissolve the league, in response to a petition by the ministry of interior. The court found that the group had violated Algeria’s regressive law on associations by failing to “respect national constants and values” when it met with nongovernmental organizations “hostile to Algeria” and engaged in “suspicious activities” such as “addressing … the issue of illegal migration” and “accusing the authorities of repression of protests.”
The LADDH loudly denounced abuses during the bloody 1990s. After the terrorism and savage repression of that decade subsided, the League accompanied families of the disappeared in demanding answers and justice. Recently, it supported protesters of the peaceful Hirak movement that burst onto the scene in 2019, demanding political reform. Ali Yahia Abdennour, who was among those arrested in 1985 and served as president of the LADDH for decades, died at 100 in 2020.
The LADDH is the latest of several independent organizations authorities have shut on flimsy pretexts. They have jailed hundreds of Hirak protesters for peaceful expression and practically obliterated Algeria’s independent media – another product of the 1989 reforms – most recently by arresting on December 24 Ihsane Kadi and sealing the offices of his two online outlets, Radio M and Maghreb Emergent.
Fearing arrest, activists have been fleeing the country when they have not been arbitrarily blocked at the border, including three prominent League figures now in exile in Europe.
The pretexts used to shut Algeria’s flagship human rights organization are no less absurd than those used to convict its founders four decades ago. Though much has changed since the 1988 protests, Algeria is governed once again by those who brook almost no dissent.
Human Rights Watch and others demand that the Rwandan authorities allow an effective, independent, and transparent investigation into the suspicious death of John Williams Ntwali, a leading investigative journalist and editor of the newspaper The Chronicles. Ntwali was regularly threatened due to his work as a journalist exposing human rights abuses in Rwanda and had expressed concern about his safety to Human Rights Watch and others.
“John Williams Ntwali was a lifeline for many victims of human rights violations and often the only journalist who dared report on issues of political persecution and repression,” said Lewis Mudge, Central Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “There are many reasons to question the theory of a road accident, and a prompt, effective investigation, drawing on international expertise, is essential to determine whether he was murdered.”
News of Ntwali’s death emerged in the evening of January 19, 2023. Police asked Ntwali’s brother to identify his body at Kacyiru Hospital morgue, telling him that Ntwali had died in a road accident the night of January 17 to 18. The police told the New Times website that Ntwali died in a motorbike accident in Kimihurura, Kigali, on January 18 at 2:50 a.m., but to date, have not provided details of the accident such as a police report, its exact location, or information on the others involved. Human Rights Watch is not aware of any reports about an alleged accident coming to light until the evening of January 19.
Ntwali was regularly threatened and attacked in the pro-government media for his investigative reporting. He played a leading role in covering and bringing attention to the plight of Kangondo neighborhood residents, who are in a long-standing dispute with authorities over land evictions. Recently, he also published videos on his YouTube channel about people who had suspiciously “disappeared.” His last video, posted on January 17, was about the reported disappearance of a genocide survivor who had spoken out about being beaten by police officers in 2018.
I don’t know what’s going to happen to me after CHOGM [the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting which took place in Kigali in June 2022]. I’m told that after CHOGM, they won’t play around with us anymore. I’ve been told five or six times. I receive phone calls from private numbers. Some [intelligence] people have come to my house twice to tell me. NISS [National Intelligence and Security Services] has told me: ‘If you don’t change your tone, after CHOGM, you’ll see what happens to you.’
On July 12, he told a friend he had survived a number of “staged accidents” in Kigali. “He was telling me about ordeals and threats he faces for his journalism,” his friend told Human Rights Watch.
Given these circumstances, Rwanda has a legal obligation to ensure a prompt, effective investigation that is capable of determining the circumstances of Ntwali’s death and identifying those responsible, with a view to bringing them to justice. An effective investigation must be independent, impartial, thorough, and transparent, conducted in full compliance with the Revised United Nations Manual on the Effective Prevention and Investigation of Extra-legal, Arbitrary and Summary Executions (The Minnesota Protocol on the Investigation of Potentially Unlawful Death).
Rwandan authorities have long targeted Ntwali. He was arrested in January 2016, in the lead up to the 2017 elections, and accused of raping a minor. Judicial officials later changed the charge to indecent assault and eventually dropped the case for lack of evidence.
At the time, Ntwali had been investigating several sensitive issues, including the death of Assinapol Rwigara, a businessman and father of would-be independent presidential candidate Diana Rwigara, whose candidacy to the 2017 elections was later rejected. The police said that Assinapol Rwigara died in a car accident in February 2015, but his family contested the authorities’ version of events.
Ntwali had also been arbitrarily arrested several other times and his website was blocked by a government regulator, apparently in retaliation for his reporting that was critical of the government.
“It is an embarrassment for the Commonwealth and a problematic message about its values that the country that presides over it is a place where the suspicious deaths of journalists and activists can be swept under the carpet,” Mudge said. “Rwandan authorities should not only not harm journalists but should be actively protecting them, and Rwanda’s partners should be holding the government to account in full for its obligations under international human rights law.”
“In the case of Mr. Roth, I now believe that I made an error in my decision not to appoint him as a Fellow at our Carr Center for Human Rights… We will extend an offer to Mr. Roth to serve as a Fellow. I hope that our community will be able to benefit from his deep experience in a wide range of human rights issues,” Elmendorf said.
The decision not to award a fellowship to Roth, first reported by The Nation, drew criticism from some alumni, the American Civil Liberties Union and HRW itself. Freedom of expression advocacy group PEN America said the decision “raises serious questions about the credibility of the Harvard program itself.”
Roth in a statement posted on Twitter on Thursday said he was “thrilled” that Elmendorf had rescinded his decision.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 