share information on human rights defenders, with special focus on human rights awards and laureates
I have written about this wonderful woman, the Laureate 2014 of the MEA, before but did not yet have this nice picture with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid [https://thoolen.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/dont-miss-the-high-commissioners-words-at-mea-2014-ceremony/]
See more at: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/MartinEnnals2014.aspx#sthash.Y5CTi7Ug.dpuf
More on awards: The winner of the 2014 Raw in War Anna Politkovskaya award is Kurdish Yazidi member of Iraq parliament Vian Dakhil .On Monday 6 October, RAW in WAR (Reach All Women in WAR) selected Vian Dakhil who has courageously spoken out and campaigned to protect the Yazidi people from the terror of Islamic State. She is the only ethnic Yazidi in the Iraqi Parliament and, despite being injured in a helicopter crash while delivering aid to survivors on Mt Sinjar, she continues to advocate and to mobilize support for her people, for the refugees and for those trapped in towns and villages under the regime of Islamic State. “I make no secret of the fact that I’m proud to be honored with your esteemed award, but the real way to honor someone is by protecting their freedom and rights. It is by bringing our prisoners back,’ said Dakhil in her speech while receiving the award.
Previous women human rights defenders who received this award: Malala Yousafzai 2013, Marie Colvin 2012, Razan Zaitouneh 2011, Dr. Halima Bashir 2010, Leila Alikarami on behalf of the One Million Signatures Campaign for Equality in Iran 2009, Malalai Joya 2008 and Natalia Estemirova 2007. See also: http://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards
via Kurdish Yazidi Woman Wins International Award | BAS NEWS.
The Martin Ennals Foundation just announced in Geneva – during a ceremony broadcast live on the internet – that the MEA Laureate of 2014 is Alejandra Ancheita from Mexico. She was selected by a Jury representing the broad international Human Rights movement (see below).
Alejandra Ancheita is the founding Director of ProDESC. For over 15 years she has worked with migrants, workers, and indigenous communities to protect their land and labour rights vis-a-vis transnational mining and energy companies. These disputes have included violent attacks on those she is trying to protect. She is also one of the pioneers in seeking accountability for transnational companies in Mexican courts when local communities’ rights are not taken into account. In Mexico, there is a clear pattern of attacks, threats, criminalization, and murders of human rights defenders. Ms Ancheita and ProDESC have been subjected to surveillance, a defamation campaign in the national media, and a break in at their offices. Read the rest of this entry »
The United Nations human rights High Commissioner for human rights today condemned the recent brutal, cold-blooded slaying by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) of Iraqi human rights defender Sameera Salih Ali Al-Nuaimy, as well as the continuing detention, sexual exploitation and sale of hundreds of women and girls in areas captured by the militant group. Read the rest of this entry »
On Tuesday, 16 September, Maryam Al Khawaja, the Bahraini human rights defender will return to court for her second hearing on charges of assaulting a police officer, which she denies. It’s now been nearly two weeks since Maryam was arrested at the airport following her return to Bahrain to visit her father. She was initially detained for seven days, but over the weekend a Bahraini judge ruled to extend her detention by an additional 10 days. This is a good occasion to draw your attention to a long but fascinating piece by Lawrence Weschler on Truthdig of 11 September 2014. Under the title “Terrorizing a Family of Human Rights Champions” he describes in detail what happened to the remarkable al-Khawaja family of democratic non-violent human rights defenders [it is rumored that for the first time a family as such was considered for the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize]. Read the rest of this entry »
The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran reports on 5 September that the Lawyers’ Court denied the Tehran Prosecutor’s Office request for the suspension of Sotoudeh’s license to practice, and stated in a ruling that, “In the opinion of the Lawyer’s Court, Ms. Sotoudeh’s temporary suspension was unwarranted and will be overruled”. According to this ruling Ms. Sotoudeh can continue her profession as a lawyer says her husband Reza Khandan on Facebook.
[Prominent lawyer and human rights defender Nasrin Sotoudeh – final nominee of the MEA in 2012 and winner of the Sakharov prize- was arrested on September 4, 2010. A lower court sentenced her to 11 years in prison, a 20-year ban on her legal practice, and a 20-year ban on foreign travel, on charges of “acting against national security,” “propaganda against the state,” and “membership in the Human Rights Defenders Center.” An appeals court reduced her sentence to six years in prison and a 10-year ban on her legal practice. After almost three years in prison, Nasrin Sotoudeh was released on September 18, 2013. Upon release, Nasrin Sotoudeh objected to the ruling by the Tehran Revolutionary Court to suspend her license to practice law, asserting the Court’s lack of jurisdiction over this matter. She subsequently renewed her license and announced that she would continue her legal practice. However, judges have refused to allow her to appear in court to represent her clients.]
for more posts on Sotoudeh: https://thoolen.wordpress.com/tag/nasrin-sotoudeh/
today (1 September 2014) expressed fears for leading human rights defender Maryam Al Khawaja, who landed at Bahrain airport last night on a visit home and has been held by Bahraini authorities. Reports state that al Khawaja, a Danish citizen, was immediately detained and will be held at the airport until tomorrow. “Bahrain is consistently revealing itself as a place where voices on human rights are not welcome,” said Human Rights First’s Brian Dooley. “In the last two months, a U.S. diplomat, a member of Congress, and the NGO Human Rights First have either been kicked out of or not allowed into the country. Now Maryam has been taken into custody and will appear in court tomorrow after trying to visit her family, including her father who is on hunger strike in prison there. Lets hope the United States, United Kingdom, and other governments will respond to whats happening to her with more than just an awkward silence.”
For more information please contact Brenda Bowser Soder at bowsersoderb[at]humanrightsfirst.org.
reports that on 28 August 2014, human rights defender Mary Conteh [national coordinator for Women’s Centre for Good Governance and Human Rights (WOCEGAR) in Sierra Leone] received a call from an unknown number where the caller threatened to spread false information that she contracted Ebola if she does not stop her human rights work. This comes just two days after she recorded a statement with the police denouncing threats pronounced against her as a result of her recent investigation on reports of misuse of public funds. On 24 August, she had visited the office of Mr. Osman O. Sesay, who represents the constituency in which WOCEGAR is located, to inquire about reports suggesting that the grant assigned to his constituency had not been used for its original purpose. The member of parliament reportedly argued that the fund was placed on a personal account and that he was not accountable to any member of the local human rights groups. As the discussion proceeded, he reportedly started hurling insults at her and eventually threatened that he could make her disappear.
(In early August 2014, Mary Conteh and her colleagues received information that members of the Sierra Leonean parliament had each received from the government a grant estimated at US$20,000 for the purpose of fighting the outbreak of Ebola in their respective constituencies.)
Coup d’etat in Thailand or not, judicial harassment continues to rack the lives of human rights defenders. A Statement of 24 August by the Asian Human Rights Commission [AHRC] concerns Pornpen Khongkachonkiet, a human rights defender and director of the Cross Cultural Foundation (CrCF), who received a warrant summoning her to report to the police station by 25 August 2014. The warrant is in relation to an investigation carried out pursuant to a legal complaint of libel and defamation filed against her by Army Task Force 41. The complaint accuses Pornpen Khongkachonkiet of causing damage to the reputation of the Army by disseminating an open letter about a case of torture. (The Army has claimed that the young man was not tortured, and so therefore the open letter constitutes libel and defamation.)
The judicial harassment of Pornpen Khongkachonkiet is part of a broader pattern of harassment and legal proceedings against human rights defenders in Thailand, such as the following 3 examples show: Read the rest of this entry »
Many newspapers, including the Guardian of 21 August, carry the news of the demise of human rights defender and early member of Amnesty International, Helen Bamber. She died aged 89. Bamber was a psychotherapist who began helping victims of torture and atrocities aged 20 when she started working with survivors of the Holocaust.
She used her vast experience to work with actor Colin Firth on his film The Railway Man, an account of a British officer captured by the Japanese during the second world war and made to work on the Thai-Burma railway. Firth said his encounter with Bamber was life-changing and the compassion she showed had touched him for life. He said that even in old age and ill-health Bamber continued to be determined to do all she could to help those affected by slavery, torture and human rights abuses: “Her courage, wisdom and pragmatism were formidable – and what she did worked.”
Actress Emma Thompson, who is president of the Helen Bamber Foundation, said: “Not only is she a great listener and an incredible interpreter, but she never lets her imagination run dry…She resists institutionalism. She knows which borders should be crossed and melds them together.”
via Human rights campaigner Helen Bamber dies aged 89 | World news | The Guardian.
for contributions: https://www.justgiving.com/HelenBamberMemorialFund/
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 