share information on human rights defenders, with special focus on human rights awards and laureates
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, through its Civil Society Section, has made available a new series of animated videos.
What is a human right? – http://goo.gl/ewPHP
What is the Human Rights Council? – http://goo.gl/Q6u6x
On the eve of Human Rights Day, they may come in handy especially for those who plan public events of an educational nature.
Image via Wikipedia
This short video from 2010 is worth viewing. It is an excellent collection of tiny portraits of individuals from a variety of countries who explain what they do to defend the rights of others and in that way demonstrate what Human Rights Defenders are. An amazingly lively UN product, helped by Bob Marley’s “Stand up for your rights” in the background.
On 28 March this year I reported some good news in the ‘crime-should-not-pay series”: the UN decided to finally establish an Iran investigator. But that joy seems to have been a bit premature as Iran has now announced that it will not permit the UN special rapporteur assigned with investigating its record of human rights to enter the country. Ahmad Shaheed, a former foreign affairs minister of the Maldives, was appointed by the UN as the monitor in June. According to the Tehran Times, a government sponsored English-language newspaper, Mohammad Javad Larijani, Iran’s secretary general of the high council for human rights, said: “The western-engineered appointment of a special rapporteur for Iran is an illegal measure”, adding that “this unilateral action makes no sense and if they want to send a special rapporteur to Iran, they should take the same measure in the case of other countries.”
The appointment of the rapporteur was the result of concerted warnings by various human rights organisations against Iran’s current record of human rights. In recent years, rights groups have expressed concerns over the arbitrary arrests of political activists, the sharp rise in the country’s rate of execution and claims of torture and rape inside Iran’s prisons. According to the organisations that have been monitoring Iran, in the first six months of this year an average of almost two people a day were executed. Dozens of journalists, several lawyers, political activists, members of different ethnic minorities and many political figures remain in jail with poor legal representation and little access to the outside world (see e.g. my blog from yesterday on the position of Norway). In his remarks about Shaheed, Larijani objected that the countries behind the appointment of the special rapporteur had remained silent over the human rights issues surrounding “Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Israeli jails”. “Iran has no problem with the individual who has been appointed as the special rapporteur, but the appointment of a rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran is unacceptable and Iran will not accept the decision,” he added.
The big question remains whether the systematic non-cooperation by Iran and similar regimes pays in the end or not. It would be of little use to make new norms or procedures if the most basic existing ones can be flaunted.
For more details see http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/18/iran-refuses-un-human-rights
The Netherlands – of which I am still a loyal citizen – has an Advisory Council on International Affairs and it is regularly asked for advice by the Government. This time the Council, at least its Committee on Human Rights, did not wait for the new Government to ask but decided spontaneously to react to the first pronouncements of the Government and the first parliamentary debates. The Council also wanted to beat the deadline for input into the Policy Document on Human Rights Policy that the Government promised to send to the Parliament on 1 April 2011. It has become a short but powerful document (30 pages) and is worth reading in its totality. The Human Rights Committee has a membership that includes most Dutch Human Rights experts such as Cees Flinterman, Jenny Goldschmidt, Willem van Genugten, Nico Schrijver, Verrijn Stuart and Menno Kamminga. You can order your copy free of charge from the Council: AIV, PO Box 20061, 2500 EB The Hague, email: aiv@minbuza.nl. Or go to the website: http://www.aiv-advice.nl.
The Jury of the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders (MEA), meeting in Geneva yesterday, selected Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera as its 2011 Laureate for her work for LGBT rights and marginalised people in Uganda. Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera, a Ugandan woman, is the founder and Executive Director of Freedom and Roam Uganda, a main lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights organization. Kasha has had the courage to appear on national television and international fora openly stating her sexual orientation and demanding equal protection of the law. This has led to her being constantly harassed and threatened. For more details and languages please go the website of the MEA www.martinennalsaward.org
As you will know, on Wednesday 16 March a group of about 150 protestors – including relatives of the 21 political prisoners whose release the protest was designed to secure – gathered outside the Interior Ministry in Damascus to present a petition calling for the prisoners’ release. The 21 include MEA 2010 Laureate Muhannad al-Hassani, the president of the Syrian Human Rights Organization.
Forty of the protestors were seized and interrogated by the security services; several were detained on the usual charges of bringing the State is disrepute. Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a news release, “Like many of the political prisoners whose release they were calling for, protestors appear to have been arrested simply for the peaceful expression of their views. The Syrian authorities must immediately release all those arrested in the last two days for merely attending peaceful protests, and stop these attacks on freedom of expression and assembly.”
Today- Saturday 26 March – it was reported that under pressure from the various on-going demonstrations, the Government would have decided to release 200 political prisoners. Is this true? Will al-Hassani finally be allowed to return to his family and his human rights work?
Deadline for submission of candidates for the 2011 Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders (MEA) is 9 December 2010. Forms on http://www.martinennalsaward.org/.
On 1 November 2010 the INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION OF JURISTS (ICJ) followed up on the case of Al-Hassani who was beaten in jail, with a press release entitled: “Syria: Muhannad Al-Hasani, ICJ Commissioner and Martin Ennals Laureate physically assaulted in jail”. The International Commission of Jurists deplored the failure of the Syrian authorities to protect the physical integrity ICJ Commissioner Muhannad Al-Hasani, an internationally renowned lawyer and human rights defender currently serving a three-year sentence in Adra Prison, Damascus. Some of the key paragraphs are:
“Muhannad Al-Hasani was severely beaten by a prisoner who accused him of working against the interests of the Syrian nation. The prisoner is believed to have been acting at the behest of the Syrian security services. Mr. Al-Hasani is suffering from hematoma and bleeding from his eye and forehead as a result of the assault. The attack on Muhannad Al-Hasani is an attack on human rights defenders everywhere who strive to protect rights under the rule of law. The Syrian authorities have brazenly rebuffed the international community by allowing this assault in the immediate aftermath of his receiving the Martin Ennals award said Wilder Tayler, ICJ Secretary General. It is the responsibility of the Syrian authorities to protect Mr. Al-Hasani from any form of ill-treatment and they must be held accountable for these attacks, added Wilder Tayler.”
“This assault intensifies a campaign of harassment and intimidation against Mr. Al-Hasani, because A of his work as a lawyer and as a human rights defender. His present prison sentence comes after his conviction by the second criminal court of Damascus for “weakening national sentiments” following an unfair trial. Prior to this he was permanently disbarred from practicing law by the non-independent Syrian Bar Association.”
For more information, please contact Saïd Benarbia, Middle East & North Africa Legal Advisor, via: info@icj.org
Last Friday – 15 October 2010 – I had the honour to introduce MUHANNAD AL-HASSANI, the 2010 Laureate of the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders. The ceremony took place at the beautiful Victoria Hall in Geneva in front of an audience of five hundred people and with more watching it on the internet because the event was being streamed in English as well as Arabic.
I first briefed the audience on what happened to Emad Baghi, last year’s Laureate from Iran. He was arrested at his home on December 28, 2009 and detained without charge. After elaborate campaigns NGOs on the Jury and many others, he was released on bail in June this year. However, immediately the regime revived the pending charges against him and in July and September Baghi was sentenced to respectively one and six years in prison and banned from media and political activities for five years. He remains free from imprisonment for now, pending an appeal, but he and other human rights defenders in Iran should not be forgotten.
al hassani in court
Al-Hassani was unanimously selected as Laureate 2010 by the MEA Jury which is composed of 10 leading human rights NGOs. If Al-Hassani looked sad on the huge posters that were placed throughout Geneva there are good reasons. He was sentenced to 3 years imprisonment for – pay attention to the dangerously vague wording – “weakening national sentiments” and “spreading false news” and…, on top of it, he had to prove his own innocence against these ludicrous charges. Muhannad Al-Hassani, as a well-established lawyer, has challenged the oppressive legal framework imposed by the Syrian government. He decided to report on legal proceedings before the State Security Court (which are supposed to be public). His NGO Swasiya has been denied registration for the past six years. He has been subjected to a travel ban and his office and communications have been under constant surveillance by Syrian security. I think that the Government of Syria should understand that its efforts to gain respect in the international community will lack credibility as long as it keeps imprisoning those defending human rights. In addition, in an appalling demonstration of servility to the Government, the Syrian Bar Association in 2009 prohibited Mr Al-Hassani from practicing law for the rest of his life… It should be the Bar Association itself that is debarred and I hope that the International Bar Association will soon address this shocking issue. The single most important goal of the Martin Ennals Award is to increase the visibility of Mr Al-Hassani’s situation and that of the many other Human Rights Defenders in Syria. The ceremony in Geneva was a show of solidarity with Al-Hassani and his family, who were not allowed to travel to Geneva and receive the award.
The annual MEA ceremony has just taken place on Friday 15 October 2010 in Geneva. The forced absence of the Laureate, Muhannad Al-Hassani, who is serving a 3-year sentence, was to a large extent compensated for by the very ‘personal’ and exclusive portrait made by film produced by True Heroes (THF). The whole 1-hour ceremony can still be viewed on: http://www.martinennalsaward.org/video/bceremony_en.m4v. The audience in the Victoria Hall was approximately 500 persons and at least the same number of people has watched it in English or Arabic on the website, including the family of Al-Hassani. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights handed over the award to the representative of the laureate.
In addition to being convicted on ludicrous charges (see my other blog about what I said about Al-Hassani) the laureate was barred for life by the Syrian Bar Association. Fortunately the International Bar Association at its recent meeting in Vancouver has started to look into this misbehaviour by its Syrian member. Also the European Union made a strong statement in support of the Laureate. It can be viewed on: http://ec.europa.eu/delegations/syria/press_corner/all_news/news/2010/20101018_en.htm
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 