industryterm:human rights

UK rights advocate co-owns firm whose spyware is ’used to target dissidents’
▻https://www.theguardian.com/law/2019/jun/14/yana-peel-uk-rights-advocate-serpentine-nso-spyware-pegasus

A leading human rights campaigner and head of a prestigious London art gallery is the co-owner of an Israeli cyberweapons company whose software has allegedly been used by authoritarian regimes to spy on dissidents, the Guardian can reveal.

Yana Peel, the chief executive of the Serpentine Galleries and a self-proclaimed champion of free speech, co-owns NSO Group, a $1bn (£790m) Israeli tech firm, according to corporate records in the US and Luxembourg.

NSO is the subject of multiple ongoing lawsuits and has been criticised by human rights groups, including Amnesty International, which has asked Israel’s ministry of defence to revoke the company’s export licences.

However, Peel, who has declared the Serpentine a “safe space for unsafe ideas” and served as a judge for international freedom-of-expression awards, defended her stake in NSO, which she has held since February. She described criticism of the company as “misinformed”.

#surveillance

Verso - The Radical origins of international indigenous representation - ▻https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/4329-the-radical-origins-of-international-indigenous-representation

While Indigenous representation has become a permanent feature at the UN, its radical origins are less well known. The historic 1977 Geneva gathering was preceded by a simpler, but no less monumental, gathering in Standing Rock, along the banks of the Missouri River. In the heat of the Northern Plains summer, 5,000 people from more than ninety-seven different Indigenous nations met from June 8 to 16, 1974. By the end of the week, the International Indian Treaty Council was founded as an international arm of the American Indian Movement (AIM), tasked with gaining international recognition at the UN for Indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. The Treaty Council’s founding document, the “Declaration of Continuing Independence,” foregrounded nationhood and treaty rights as central features of an American Indian political identity. “We condemn the United States of America for its gross violation of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty in militarily surrounding, killing, and starving the citizens of the Independent Oglala Nation into exile,” it read, in reference to the brutal crackdown on AIM following their occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973. The Treaty Council appealed to “conscionable nations” to join “in charging and prosecuting the United States of America for its genocidal practices against the sovereign Native Nations; most recently illustrated by Wounded Knee 1973 and the continued refusal to sign the United Nations 1948 Treaty on Genocide.”2 Following the seventy-one-day siege, AIM leadership had been arrested and tied up in court proceedings. Then came the brutal repression under the infamous FBI Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) that nearly destroyed Indigenous, Black, and revolutionary movements in the United States. The strategic turn to international human rights law largely saved the Indigenous movement from utter collapse in a moment of intense state repression.

#peuples_autochtones #internationalisme #standing_rock

» Israeli Soldiers Kill A Palestinian, Injure 40, In Salfit
March 13, 2019 12:57 AM IMEMC News
▻http://imemc.org/article/israeli-soldiers-kill-a-palestinian-injure-40-in-salfit

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Israeli soldiers invaded, Tuesday, the central West Bank city of Salfit, and fired dozens of live rounds, rubber-coated steel bullets and gas bombs at Palestinians protesting the invasion, killing a young man, and wounding more than 40 others.

Media sources said the soldiers shot and killed Mohammad Jamil Shahin , 23, in addition to wounding at least 40 others.

The slain Palestinian was shot with a live round in the heart and died from his serious wounds shortly after he was injured.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said its medics provided treatment for 40 Palestinians; many of them were shot with rubber-coated steel bullets, and others suffered the effects of teargas inhalation.

It is worth mentioning that dozens of soldiers invaded Salfit, and were deployed in several neighborhoods, and main roads, in addition to storming and ransacking buildings, including homes and shops, and confiscated surveillance recordings and equipment. (...)

#Palestine_assassinée

Snowden Joins Calls For Google To End Censored Chinese Search Project
▻https://www.dailydot.com/debug/snowden-google-censored-china

Mikael Thalen— Dec 11 2018 - Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has joined numerous human rights groups in condemning Google over its plan to launch a censored search engine in China.

In an open letter published Monday, Snowden and more than 60 organizations including Amnesty International, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Human Rights Watch, called on the tech giant to cease its work on the secretive “Dragonfly” project.

“Facilitating Chinese authorities’ access to personal data, as described in media reports, would be particularly reckless,” the letter states. “If such features were launched, there is a real risk that Google would directly assist the Chinese government in arresting or imprisoning people simply for expressing their views online, making the company complicit in human rights violations.”

First revealed last August by the Intercept, the search app, made in an attempt by Google to re-enter the Chinese market, would not only surveil users but blacklist results for search queries such as “student protest” and “Nobel Prize” at the behest of Beijing.

“New details leaked to the media strongly suggest that if Google launches such a product it would facilitate repressive state censorship, surveillance, and other violations affecting nearly a billion people in China,” the letter adds.

Describing the project as “reckless,” the letter also warns that deploying Dragonfly would likely “set a terrible precedent for human rights and press freedoms worldwide.”

Monday’s statement comes just weeks after more than 600 Google employees signed a similar letter demanding the company cancel Dragonfly’s development.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who was confronted about Dragonfly during testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee Monday, has repeatedly alleged that there are no plans “right now” to launch the project.

A leaked meeting transcript from July, however, revealed Google’s search chief Ben Gomes had said the company intended to launch Dragonfly somewhere between January and April of 2019.

#Chine #surveillance #Google

Human Rights Double Standard: Iranian Sanctions Impact the Most Vulnerable - JURIST - Commentary - Legal News & Commentary
▻https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2019/01/human-rights-double-standard-iranian-sanctions-impact-the-most-vulnerable

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The sanctions thereby openly advocate for interference, which has been labeled the new imperialism. This belief is strengthened by the inability of the authorities to respect human rights as stated in the Iranian constitution (right to life, right to food, gender equality…) due to external obstruction. In such a context, human rights become a luxury, raising doubts about their universality. How can human rights be universal when they are used to coerce a country into forfeiting its sovereignty, thereby supporting a foreign power’s political agenda? It is a double standard practice the Iranian authorities have long complained about.

Overall, the human rights’ violations of the Iranians living under sanctions illustrate why the United Nations Food Programme has called sanctions “brutal instruments.” It is the powerless and the voiceless citizens that are struck first in the name of human rights. Some scholars and practitioners argue that sanctions will bolster human rights, while the impact is clearly that of a violation of economic and social rights. This is not a schizophrenic attitude towards human rights if one considers the overall aim of the sanctions is to ensure a change of regime that would hopefully respect human rights. This, therefore, creates a double standard, where the United States and the European Union can use international human rights law to criticize the Islamic Republic while simultaneously breaching Iranian citizens’ rights. It begs the question of “which” human rights standards are applicable to Iranians? Should Iranians be punished for a system that exists above and beyond them?

#sanctions #Iran

Democracy not for sale
The struggle for food sovereignty in the age of austerity in Greece
19 November 2018
Report
Austerity measures led to increased rural poverty and food insecurity in Greece and violated her people’s human right to food. How did this happen and who is responsible?

This Report examines the impacts of austerity in Greece on the right to food. It concludes that the Greek State and the Eurozone Member States violated the Greek people’s right to food as a result of the austerity measures required by three Memorandums of Understanding (2010, 2012 and 2015). In other words, the austerity packages imposed on Greece contravened international human rights law.

The share of households with children unable to afford a protein-based meal on a daily basis doubled from 4.7% in 2009 to 8.9% in 2014. EU statistics estimate that 40.5% of children in 2016 faced material and social deprivation.

Taxes as a proportion of agricultural net value added soared from 4% between 1993 and 2010 to 15.4% in 2016.

Troika members claim that the sole responsibility for the impacts of the MoUs lies with the Greek State. This argument is false because they, with Greece, were joint signatures of the three MoUs. Therefore, the responsibility for violations of the right to food is a shared one too. Indeed it can be argued that the responsibility of the Eurozone Member States is much bigger, given the evidence of direct interference or even coercion by the Member States of the Troika on Greece to sign the MoUs.

Eurozone Member States – as States Parties to the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and other international human rights instruments – have therefore breached their extraterritorial obligations to respect the human right to food in Greece.

▻https://www.tni.org/en/democracy-not-for-sale

#grèce #austérité #nourriture #UE #EU #souveraineté_alimentaire

Felicia Langer. Remembering Israel’s human rights law trailblazer, a Holocaust survivor who called to boycott Israeli products

A communist labeled ’the terrorists’ attorney,’ Felicia Langer called her clients ‘resistance fighters.’ In 1990 she gave up and left for Germany, where she died over the summer

Ofer Aderet SendSend me email alerts
Nov 06, 2018

▻https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-remembering-israel-s-human-rights-law-trailblazer-1.6632132

After the Six-Day War, attorney Felicia Langer opened an office near the Old City in Jerusalem and began representing Arabs. Langer was a strange type in the local topography: a Jewish Holocaust survivor with a Polish accent who adhered to European manners and believed in the ideology of communism.
“Her engagement with Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip was perhaps the strangest thing in the Middle East,” wrote attorney Michael Sfard. Her acquaintances saw in her a pathfinder in legal battles that advanced the human rights of Palestinians. Her enemies saw in her a traitor and accessory of terrorists.
>> Holocaust survivor and Palestinians’ rights lawyer Felicia Langer dies in exile at 87
She was born in the city of Tarnov, Poland in 1930 as Felicia Amalia White. In World War II she fled with her family to the Soviet Union, where her father died. After the war, she returned to the land of her birth and married Holocaust survivor Moshe Langer. In 1950 they immigrated to Israel – “not because of Zionist ideology,” according to her, but to live near her mother.
Archival documents attest to the tense relationships between her and the Israeli establishment. In 1968 an intelligence officer in the military government in Hebron testified before the Legal Attaché of the West Bank that she “held extreme left-wing opinions.” In 1975, the Foreign Ministry reported that the Shin Bet security service viewed her legal activities as being guided by political motivations to harm “the state and the image of the state.” She faced threats to her life throughout her career. Occasionally, she felt compelled to hire a bodyguard.
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Langer fought the expulsion of Palestinian leaders, housing demolitions of terror suspects, administrative detentions (imprisonment without charges), and torture. “She never hesitated to accuse the establishment of crimes and to represent her clients as victims of an evil regime,” wrote Sfard.

When they called her “the defense attorney of terrorists,” she replied that her clients were not terrorists, but “resistance fighters.” “A people under occupation has the right to wage violent struggle,” she said. Among her famous clients was the mayor of Nablus, Bassam Shakaa, one of the leaders of resistance to the occupation, whose expulsion Langer succeeded in preventing. Other clients included the parents of the attackers of Bus 300, who sought to sue the state for killing their sons, and a young Dutch woman who was detained at Ben-Gurion International Airport after she gathered intelligence for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Langer maintained that she was just a “small cog.”
In 1990, she immigrated to Germany, after handling what she estimated to have been 3,000 cases. “I could no longer help the Palestinian victims in the framework of the existing legal system and its flouting of international law, which is supposed to protect the people that I defended,” she said in an interview with Eran Torbiner. “It is forbidden to be silent; silence also can kill,” she said, in explaining her call for the boycott of Israeli goods. As a German citizen, she called on Germany to fight the occupation.
Langer lived in Tübingen, teaching and writing books. Critics were angered by her comparison of Israel to the Nazis, and accused her of hypocrisy for ignoring the crimes of communist regimes. When she was asked once to describe her “love of homeland,” she answered: “Hatred of occupation.” In June, Langer died of cancer at age 87.

Ofer Aderet
Haaretz Correspondent

Bots at the Gate A Human Rights Analysis of Automated Decision. Making in Canada’s Immigration and Refugee System

A new report from the Citizen Lab and the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law investigates the use of artificial intelligence and automated decision-making in Canada’s immigration and refugee systems. The report finds that use of automated decision-making technologies to augment or replace human judgment threatens to violate domestic and international human rights law, with alarming implications for the fundamental human rights of those subjected to these technologies.

The ramifications of using automated decision-making in the sphere of immigration and refugee law and policy are far-reaching. Marginalized and under-resourced communities such as residents without citizenship status often have access to less robust human rights protections and less legal expertise with which to defend those rights. The report notes that adopting these autonomous decision-making systems without first ensuring responsible best practices and building in human rights principles at the outset may only exacerbate pre-existing disparities and can lead to rights violations including unjust deportation.

Since at least 2014, Canada has been introducing automated decision-making experiments in its immigration mechanisms, most notably to automate certain activities currently conducted by immigration officials and to support the evaluation of some immigrant and visitor applications. Recent announcements signal an expansion of the uses of these technologies in a variety of immigration decisions that are normally made by a human immigration official. These can include decisions on a spectrum of complexity, including whether an application is complete, whether a marriage is “genuine”, or whether someone should be designated as a “risk.”

The report provides a critical interdisciplinary analysis of public statements, records, policies, and drafts by relevant departments within the Government of Canada, including Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, and the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. The report additionally provides a comparative analysis to similar initiatives occurring in similar jurisdictions such as Australia and the United Kingdom. In February, the IHRP and the Citizen Lab submitted 27 separate Access to Information Requests and continue to await responses from Canada’s government.

The report concludes with a series of specific recommendations for the federal government, the complete and detailed list of which are available at the end of this publication. In summary, they include recommendations that the federal government:

1. Publish a complete and detailed report, to be maintained on an ongoing basis, of all automated decision systems currently in use within Canada’s immigration and refugee system, including detailed and specific information about each system.

2. Freeze all efforts to procure, develop, or adopt any new automated decision system technology until existing systems fully comply with a government-wide Standard or Directive governing the responsible use of these technologies.

3. Adopt a binding, government-wide Standard or Directive for the use of automated decision systems, which should apply to all new automated decision systems as well as those currently in use by the federal government.

4. Establish an independent, arms-length body with the power to engage in all aspects of oversight and review of all use of automated decision systems by the federal government.

5. Create a rational, transparent, and public methodology for determining the types of administrative processes and systems which are appropriate for the experimental use of automated decision system technologies, and which are not.

6. Commit to making complete source code for all federal government automated decision systems—regardless of whether they are developed internally or by the private sector—public and open source by default, subject only to limited exceptions for reasons of privacy and national security.

7. Launch a federal Task Force that brings key government stakeholders alongside academia and civil society to better understand the current and prospective impacts of automated decision system technologies on human rights and the public interest more broadly.

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animation où chaque frappe est signée par l’entreprise qui a vendu la bombe

Made in America
Shrapnel found in Yemen ties US bombs to string of civilian deaths over course of bloody civil war.
▻https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2018/09/world/yemen-airstrikes-intl/index.html

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Last month, a CNN investigation found remnants of a US-made bomb at the scene of an airstrike that left dozens of schoolboys dead. Now, an independent Yemen-based human rights group called Mwatana has given CNN exclusive access to a trove of documents that show fragments of US-manufactured bombs at the scene of a string of other incidents since 2015, when the civil war began. In each of those cases, civilians were either killed or put at risk.

Mwatana, which documents violations by all parties in Yemen’s conflict, used its network of trained field researchers to photograph evidence at the scene of strikes. The group consulted weapons experts to identify the weapons used from serial numbers found on the fragments. Mwatana was recognized last month with an award by US body Human Rights First.

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While CNN was not on the ground, we have made our own checks using image metadata and publicly available government websites linking each of these incidents to a US manufacturer. An internationally renowned weapons expert also analyzed each image for CNN.

The incidents give a snapshot of US involvement in Yemen’s conflict through its support for the Saudi-led coalition that is battling a Houthi-led rebel insurgency. The United States says it does not make targeting decisions for the coalition. But it does support its operations through billions of dollars in arms sales, the refueling of Saudi combat aircraft and some sharing of intelligence.

How to Counter Donald Trump’s War on the Media | The New Yorker
▻https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-to-counter-donald-trumps-war-on-the-media

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Trump has attempted to delegitimize the entire fact-based press in the eyes of his supporters. “Stick with us,” he said in a speech last week. “Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news . . . What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.” George Orwell gets quoted too liberally these days, but, as the national security expert David Priess pointed out, these statements were Orwellian in the extreme. (“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”) And, judging by Trump’s steady approval ratings and the large crowds at his rallies, many people are willing to take him at his word.

What can be done about all this? The first thing is to recognize it for what it is: a reckless descent into the demagoguery, misinformation, and incitement that are normally associated with authoritarian regimes. In a statement on Thursday, two United Nations experts on freedom of expression warned, of Trump’s comments about the media, “These attacks run counter to the country’s obligations to respect press freedom and international human rights law.” They added, “We are especially concerned that these attacks increase the risk of journalists being targeted with violence.”

#Médias #Liberté_expression

OHCHR | UN human rights expert condemns horrific violence in #Gaza
▻http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23087&LangID=E

“I must reiterate that international human rights law sets strict prohibitions on the use of force by law enforcement officials. Lethal force against demonstrators is prohibited unless strictly unavoidable in the case of an imminent threat to life or threat of serious injury. The killing of demonstrators in violation of these rules, and within the context of #occupation, may amount to willful killing, a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention, as well as a war crime.”

#crimes #Israel #assassinats

Do we need new international law for autonomous weapons?
▻https://www.defensenews.com/unmanned/2018/04/10/do-we-need-new-international-law-for-autonomous-weapons

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As the United States, Russia and China continue to push forward in their development of unmanned autonomous weapon systems, questions surrounding how these new weapons will be governed and regulated are becoming more salient.

This week, parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) will be meeting at the Hague to discuss the definition of “meaningful human control,” a term that is central to the ongoing regulation discussion.

But for some legal experts, the bigger question is “whether the international community as a whole will demand compliance with any legal developments in Geneva on autonomous weapons, or compliance with the existing law we already have that’s implicated with this new technology,” Mary Ellen O’Connor, professor of law at the Notre Dame Law School, said last Thursday during a keynote address at the Brookings Institution. “We have the UN charter and other principles restricting the use of military force, we have principles of international humanitarian law to govern combat on the battlefield and we have human rights law. It’s all relevant.”

We’re running out of time to stop killer robot weapons.
▻https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/11/killer-robot-weapons-autonomous-ai-warfare-un

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It’s five years this month since the launch of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, a global coalition of non-governmental groups calling for a ban on fully autonomous weapons. This month also marks the fifth time that countries have convened at the United Nations in Geneva to address the problems these weapons would pose if they were developed and put into use.

The countries meeting in Geneva this week are party to a major disarmament treaty called the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. While some diplomatic progress has been made under that treaty’s auspices since 2013, the pace needs to pick up dramatically. Countries that recognise the dangers of fully autonomous weapons cannot wait another five years if they are to prevent the weapons from becoming a reality.

Fully autonomous weapons, which would select and engage targets without meaningful human control, do not yet exist, but scientists have warned they soon could. Precursors have already been developed or deployed as autonomy has become increasingly common on the battlefield. Hi-tech military powers, including China, Israel, Russia, South Korea, the UK and the US, have invested heavily in the development of autonomous weapons. So far there is no specific international law to halt this trend.

Two children among the 25 protesters killed by Israel since launch of Great March of Return

Two of those killed were identified by the health ministry in Gaza and the human rights group Al Mezan as children under the age of 18: Hussein Muhammad Adnan Madi, 14, shot in the stomach with live fire east of Gaza City, and Alaa al-Din Yahya al-Zamli, fatally wounded east of Rafah.
▻https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/two-children-journalist-among-israels-latest-gaza-victims

OHCHR | UN rights experts alarmed by detention of Palestinian girl for slapping Israeli soldier
▻http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22654&LangID=E

“The Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Israel has ratified, clearly states that children are to be deprived of their liberty only as a last resort, and only for the shortest appropriate period of time,” said Michael Lynk, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967.

“ None of the facts of this case would appear to justify her ongoing detention prior to her trial, particularly given the concerns expressed by the Committee on the Rights of the Child about the use of pre-trial detention and detention on remand.”

[...]

They noted that Tamimi was arrested in the middle of the night by well-armed soldiers, and then questioned by Israeli security officials without a lawyer or family members present. “This violates the fundamental legal guarantee to have access to counsel during interrogation,” said José Guevara, Chair of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

The experts also expressed concern about her place of detention - Hasharon prison in Israel - in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention which states that the deportation of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the occupying power, or to that of any other country, is prohibited, regardless of the motive.

“Sadly, this is not an isolated case,” said Lynk. “Figures from Palestine show that Israel detains and prosecutes between 500 to 700 Palestinian children in military courts annually.

“We have received reports that these children are commonly mistreated while in detention, subjected to both physical and psychological abuse , deprived of access to lawyers or family members during interrogation, and tried under a military court system in which there are significant concerns regarding independence and impartiality, and which has a worryingly high conviction rate.” In this respect, the experts referred to various opinions on Israel adopted by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention which have emphasized the right of children to be tried by a juvenile justice system rather than before military tribunals, in accordance with relevant international human rights law.

#Crimes #Israel #impunité #Tamimi #enfants

A dangerous 71-year-old
▻http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.809634
The Israeli military authorities are keeping a retired Palestinian history teacher in detention without trial, and we’re not allowed to know why. Next comes the decision whether he’s healthy enough for prison

By Amira Hass | Aug. 30, 2017 | 1:04 AM

Badran Jaber , 71, is endangering the security of the region. Thank God we have the Shin Bet security service, which sent soldiers on the night of August 9 to break into his home, hold his seven terrified grandchildren (ages 2 to 10) in a room separate from the adults, and detain him. Jaber, a retired history teacher, is so dangerous that he and we aren’t even allowed to know the suspicions against him.

An administrative detention order for four months was issued against him on August 13, and the military authorities can extend the injunction repeatedly. And so Jaber was added to the 450 or so Palestinians who are now imprisoned without trial. On August 16 the secret information was whispered into the ear of the military judge, Maj. Rafael Yemini, who approved the detention — without evidence, witnesses, an indictment and a right to respond. Has an Israeli judge, military or civilian, ever been born who doubted the word of the Shin Bet?

I’ll let you in on a secret: Jaber is opposed to the Israeli occupation. The same is true of his seven children and his wife. When asked his opinion, he doesn’t hide it. There are pictures of him from a few years ago demonstrating with Palestinians and Israelis in Hebron against the destruction of the city by one of the most violent species of settlers.

“He’s very proud of his relationship with left-wing activists in Israel,” said his daughter Bissan, referring to his ties with Tarabut-Hithabrut, an Arab-Jewish social movement, and the joint conferences in Hebron of the Palestinian left and a genuine, socialist and anti-colonialist Israeli left. When she and her brothers weren’t allowed to travel abroad, she said, they were told that it was because of her father. Israel, the military and democratic power, is intimidated by his words and opinions. Or it’s sending a message: Imprison your thoughts and your words. Keep quiet.

With chains on his feet, Jaber will once again be brought into the military courtroom in Ofer. He will be holding a bag full of medication. Military occupation isn’t a recipe for one’s health, nor were Jaber’s previous periods of detention. Between 1972 and 2006 he spent almost 12 years in prison: in administrative detention, in detention during an investigation, and after being convicted of political activity for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Each time he was behind bars for two to three months to a maximum of 27 months. On Thursday it will be decided whether he is fit for detention, as an anonymous prison service doctor has determined, or not, as his lawyer, Mahmoud Hassan of the prisoner support and human rights group Addameer, will try to prove.

Jaber will be holding a bag full of medication because there’s no way of knowing how long he’ll be kept handcuffed in a kind of waiting cage before being brought into the trailer that serves as the courtroom. During the first extension of his detention, on August 10, which was one of the hottest days of the year, he was kept in that situation from 8:30 A.M. until about 5 P.M. A kind of torture, even for a healthy man, and certainly for someone suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure, has had open heart surgery, is taking medication for prostate cancer and is connected to a catheter.

Bissan, 26, is a lawyer. On the morning before his detention, the proud father joined her when she was furnishing her new office. Thirteen years ago, after being tortured for an entire day in the cage where he was awaiting trial, he told her, his youngest daughter: I want you to be my lawyer the next time. Sure enough, she was there for the extension of his recent detention, before the administrative order was issued.

Her presence didn’t prevent the torture. After about six hours in one cage with a water faucet, he was transferred to another cage without one. There she was allowed to see him. She wanted to give him her water bottle, but the alert prison service guards prevented her and other lawyers from doing so. Beyond the letter of the law the guards brought him a bottle that they filled with water.

During their meeting, Bissan told him that she and her fiancé planned to postpone their wedding, which was scheduled for August 18, until her father’s release. “Absolutely not,” he told her. “I’ll be angry if you postpone it, if you let that interfere with your plans. Our lifelong struggle is only so that we’ll be able to live.”

Years on, Israel yet to respond to appeal on case of 4 Gaza boys killed on beach in 2014
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=778883

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BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — More than two years after an appeal was sent to an Israeli court demanding the reopening of a closed investigation into the 2014 Israeli missile attack that killed four children playing soccer on a beach in Gaza, Israeli authorities have remained silent and refused to respond to the appeal.

Israeli human rights group Adalah released a statement on Sunday condemning the Israeli government’s failure to respond to appeals from a number of rights groups, including Adalah, the al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.

Adalah attorneys Muna Haddad and Tamim Younis wrote in the appeal letter that the case of the Bakr children “exemplifies Israel’s flawed investigation system and unwillingness to genuinely carry out an investigation,” Adalah said in the statement.

“This is an unreasonable delay highlighting a lack of willingness on the part of [Israeli] authorities to conduct an effective investigation. They (Israeli authorities) are essentially thwarting any possibility of conducting such an investigation,” Haddad and Younis’ letter wrote, adding that Israel has an obligation to investigate any suspicion of war crimes under international law.

“An investigation must comply with the universal principles of independence, effectiveness, promptness, impartiality and transparency… The nature of this investigation and the unreasonable foot-dragging when it came to responding to parents’ appeals are a gross violation of these international standards,” Haddad and Younis said

July 17, 2014 11:22 A.M.
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=713803
#Bakr_children
@kassem

#Cambodia: Appeal Court should overturn unfair conviction of land rights defender #TepVanny, say international CSOs

We, the undersigned, call on the Court of Appeal to overturn the unjust conviction of Ms. #Tep_Vanny on charges of intentional violence with aggravating circumstances based on her peaceful activism at a 2013 protest, for which she received a draconian sentence of two years and six months’ imprisonment on 23 February 2017. The Court of Appeal will hear Ms. Tep Vanny’s appeal against conviction tomorrow, 27 July 2017. On 15 August 2017, Ms. Tep Vanny will have spent one year in detention; her imprisonment is a clear attempt to silence one of Cambodia’s most fearless and outspoken defenders of human rights ahead of the national elections in July 2018.
Tomorrow’s appeal is one of three previously dormant years-old cases punitively reactivated against Ms. Tep Vanny. In August 2016 the prosecutor of the Phnom Penh Municipal Court reactivated the long-
dormant charges of intentional violence with aggravating circumstances against Ms. Tep Vanny while she was in pre-trial detention prior to her spurious conviction on other charges for taking part in a “#Black_Monday” protest to call for the release of the “#Freethe5KH” detainees,1 who were being held in arbitrary
pre-trial detention at the time.2 The case under appeal dates back to Ms. Tep Vanny’s participation in a 2013 peaceful protest in front of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s house, during which a group of #Boeung_Kak_Lake activists called for the release of a detained fellow community member. This protest had ended in violence against protesters at the hands of Daun Penh security guards, in which Ms. Tep Vanny herself was injured.
On 23 February 2017, Ms. Tep Vanny was convicted on these charges and sentenced to 30 months in prison and a fine of five million riel (about US$1,250), as well as being ordered to pay compensation totaling nine million riel (about US$2,250) to the plaintiffs, two Daun Penh security guards.
Ms. Tep Vanny’s trial did not comply with international standards for fair trial rights: no credible evidence was presented to justify the charges against her and neither the plaintiffs nor any prosecution witnesses gave live testimony at either of the two hearings; instead only written statements were provided, preventing cross-examination. Community members outside the court faced unprovoked violence from para-police and, following delivery of the verdict, riot police entered the court room and physically restrained a number of defense witnesses.3
The re-opening of these charges appears to be a politically motivated attempt to restrict and punish Ms. Tep Vanny’s work as a land activist and human rights defender, as part of the Cambodian authorities’
ongoing crackdown on dissenting voices. Peaceful assembly and free expression are not crimes, and human rights defenders should not be penalized for peacefully exercising their fundamental freedoms. We call on the Court of Appeal to exercise its independence and rectify the injustice of Ms. Tep Vanny’s flawed trial by overturning her conviction and sentence. We call on the Cambodian authorities to cease their judicial harassment of Ms. Tep Vanny, as well as other Boeung Kak Lake activists, and to release her from prison.

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Shocking new evidence could overturn Northern Ireland ruling that became an international blueprint for torture | openDemocracy
▻https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/tom-griffin/shocking-new-evidence-could-overturn-northern-ireland-ruling-that-bec

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British forces in Northern Ireland used waterboarding and electric shock treatment on detainees during the 1970s, newly uncovered files show. Witness statements and internal Whitehall correspondence released for the first time last month could have significant implications for international human rights law and British-Irish relations.

One victim of waterboarding in Belfast spoke out publicly about his experience for the first time at following the recovery of his original testimony from 1972, which recounts that he ‘felt like I was drowning or suffocating until I fell on the floor unconscious’

The documents were revealed at an event in London to mark the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture on 26 June, hosted by Matrix Chambers, along with the Pat Finucane Centre, the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) and Amnesty International.

They add to growing evidence that interrogation practices in Northern Ireland went beyond those criticised by the European Court of Human Rights in the 1978 case of Ireland v. the United Kingdom. The so-called ‘five techniques’ examined in that judgement included deprivation of sleep, deprivation of food and drink, stress positions, hooding and subjection to ‘white noise’.

Although the European Court condemned these practices as ‘inhuman and degrading’ it refused to describe them as torture. This paradoxically opened the way for the ruling to be used as a blueprint by interrogators, notably in the ‘torture memos’ drafted by the Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the US John Yoo to justify practices used during the earliest phase of the ‘War on Terror’.

#Gaza braces itself for ’collapse’ after Israel approves reduction of electricity supply
June 12, 2017 1:33 P.M. (Updated: June 12, 2017 5:48 P.M.)
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=777599

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BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — The Israeli security cabinet has approved a 40 percent reduction in Israel’s electricity supply to the besieged Gaza Strip, where Palestinians are already coping with a crippling power crisis and daily, hours-long blackouts, according Israeli media reports.

While Gaza’s electricity company said it had not received an official order regarding the impending power cut, it called upon Palestinians in Gaza to prepare for the worst, while human rights groups urged Israel to reconsider the move — expected to have immediate and disastrous effects on the medical sector in particular.

The approval came after Israeli authorities announced plans to make the cuts last month, upon request of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in occupied West Bank, which foots Gaza’s monthly electricity bill from Israel, by subtracting from taxes collected by Israel on behalf of the PA.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had reportedly informed Israel that the PA only intended to pay 60 percent of the 40 million shekel ($11.19 million) monthly bill, as Hamas, the de facto ruling party in Gaza, and the Fatah-led PA continued to blame each other for a deepening crisis in Gaza.

Meanwhile, the Gaza electricity company said on Monday that it had been informed by Egypt’s power company that it could cut off power lines feeding Gaza at any time, without providing further details.

Hungary will cease providing Kiskunhalas asylum-seekers with food by end of April

Refugees at the #Kiskunhalas camp in southern Hungary have been notified that soon they will no longer receive any food or stipends for purchasing food.

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Poland : Asylum Seekers Blocked at Border

(Budapest) – Polish authorities routinely deny asylum seekers at the Belarus-Poland border the right to apply for asylum and instead summarily return them to Belarus, Human Rights Watch said today. Since 2016, large numbers of asylum seekers, mostly from the Russian Republic of Chechnya, but also from Tajikistan and Georgia, have tried to apply for asylum in Poland at the border with Belarus.

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–-> @reka : une autre frontière à épaissir sur les cartes...

Quand la France accueille une organisation terroriste iranienne a Paris pour préparer la reconquête de l’Iran le MEK ▻http://ncr-iran.org/en/news/iran-resistance/20677-live-update-freeiran-gathering-2016 Des politiciens français, journalistes, pseudo-experts élus français participent à cette grand-messe en parlant en notre nom au service de la gouroute Maryam Radjavi accusée de crimes par Amnesty mais largement ignoré par les citoyens français.."Dominique Lefebvre, Member of National Assembly.
Gilbert Mitterrand, President of France Libertés: The fight for human rights and a democratic and free Iran is why everyone is gathered there today.A delegation of French lawmakers from the National Assembly and Senate as well as renowned French personalities who have over many years supported the Iranian Resistance are now on the stage. They include Bishop Jacques Gaillot, former Minister Alain Vivien, former governor and head of France’s internal security agency DST Yves Bonnet, former mayor and MP Jean-Pierre Brard, former French MP and judge Francois Colcombet, honorary president of the French human rights group New Human Rights (NDH) Pierre Bercis, Michelle Joli and MPs Dominique Lefebvre and Michel Terrot and Senators Alain Neri and Hélène Conway-Mouret, who is a former French deputy minister of foreign affairs."
Que du beau linge ! Allez une bonne petite guerre humanitaire en vue ??

Why Chad shut its border with Libya

The threat of terrorism – as well as an interest in impressing the new administration in Washington – are likely factors.

▻http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2017/0121/Why-Chad-shut-its-border-with-Libya

#Tchad #Libye #frontières #fermeture_des_frontières #terrorisme
cc @reka

Palestinian shot dead by Israeli forces during East Jerusalem clashes
Dec. 22, 2016 10:43 A.M. (Updated : Dec. 22, 2016 11:02 A.M.)
▻http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=774546

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BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Israeli forces shot and killed a Palestinian overnight Wednesday, after he allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at Israeli soldiers during clashes that erupted in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Kafr Aqab when Israeli troops raided the area to carry out a punitive home demolition.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health identified the slain Palestinian as 19-year-old Ahmad Kharoubi .

There were no injuries among Israeli forces, according to the Israeli army.

Kharoubi was critically injured after being shot with live ammunition in the neck, and died shortly after his arrival to the hospital.

An Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an that after suspects threw improvised explosive devices at Israeli soldiers, Israeli forces opened fire on one of the suspects, which “resulted in his death.”

The clashes erupted in the wake of an Israeli army raid to partially demolish the house of Misbah Abu Sbeih who was shot dead by Israeli forces in October after carrying out a shooting attack in occupied East Jerusalem, killing one Israeli civilian and one Israeli police officer.

The Israeli Supreme Court ordered on Monday that the interior walls of the home be destroyed and its exterior entrances and windows be sealed, despite the fact that Abu Sbeih’s widow and five children — the youngest of them 10 and the oldest 18 — were still residing in the house.

#Palestine_assassinée
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Un Palestinien tué dans des heurts avec des soldats israéliens à Jérusalem-Est
AFP / 22 décembre 2016 07h51
▻http://www.romandie.com/news/Un-Palestinien-tue-dans-des-heurts-avec-des-soldats-israeliens-a-JerusalemEst/763875.rom

Jérusalem - Un Palestinien a été tué dans la nuit de mercredi à jeudi dans un quartier de Jérusalem-Est annexée lors de heurts avec des soldats israéliens venus détruire le domicile de l’auteur d’une attaque meurtrière contre des Israéliens, a indiqué l’armée.

Une porte-parole de l’armée a indiqué que des suspects avaient lancé des engins explosifs contre les soldats, qui avaient répondu par des tirs, provoquant la mort de l’un d’eux. Le ministère palestinien de la Santé l’a identifié comme Ahmad al-Kharoubi, 19 ans.

La porte-parole militaire a précisé que les soldats étaient venus détruire le domicile de Misbah Abou Sabaih, à Koufar Akab, un quartier de Jérusalem-Est, partie majoritairement palestinienne de Jérusalem annexée et occupée par Israël.

Musabah Abou Sabaih avait ouvert le feu le 9 octobre sur des Israéliens à Jérusalem-Est, tuant une retraitée de 60 ans et un policier de 29 ans. Il avait été abattu.

New MA stream in Forensic Architecture - Announcements - e-flux
▻http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/77034/new-ma-stream-in-forensic-architecture

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How can architecture investigate urban conflict, human rights violations, and environmental violence?

This question lies at the heart of a newly established MA stream in Forensic Architecture. It expands the pedagogical scope of Goldsmiths’ Centre for Research Architecture by creating an opportunity for students to engage with the groundbreaking work carried out by the Forensic Architecture team led by Professor Eyal Weizman.

Since its foundation in 2011, Forensic Architecture has established itself as an innovative research agency that undertakes advanced architectural and media investigations on behalf of human rights groups, threatened communities, as well as international and legal organisations.

While still continuing to participate in the full offerings of the Centre’s MA in Research Architecture, students in this stream will work on a wide range of spatial investigations in close collaboration with Forensic Architecture and its network of collaborators, including scientists, legal practitioners, and NGOs.

Dedicated weekly seminars and workshops will develop a critical toolbox of mapping and visualisation techniques, as a well as a space of theoretical reflection on questions of social, political, and environmental justice.

About the Centre for Research Architecture
The Centre for Research Architecture brings together MA and PhD students from a wide variety of backgrounds and disciplines to work through questions of contemporary culture, politics, media, ecology, and justice. We offer an alternative to traditional postgraduate architectural education through a practice-based environment that investigates the urgent political conditions of our time through a combination of fieldwork, theoretical enquiry, and forms of creative practice.

Programmes