#Human Rights Abuses

[keepscrollinghun]

@refugees

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) has warned of a growing humanitarian catastrophe in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where fighting between government forces and armed groups has caused hundreds of thousands of people to flee.

The mining in the Province of North Kivu Province is mainly for gold, cassiterite, coltan, diamonds, tourmaline, pyrochlore.

Humanitarians estimate that there are now more than 300,000 displaced people in Goma. Anne-Sylvie Linder says, “Some of them are at Bulengo or Lac Vert – where a site was prepared – as well as Rusayo, an outlying district in Goma where authorities have made several acres available. The Lac Vert site nevertheless poses a significant risk to the people there because of the potential for the release of dangerous methane gas. (ICRC.org)

update source to read more: VOA Reliefweb

[odinsblog]

During her arrest, Ayesh was subjected to assault, threats, and insults by Israeli soldiers, according to the Addameer human rights organisation. She was transferred to Israel’s Hasharon Prison before being later taken to Damon Prison, where she is now being held.

Ayesh’s work as a human rights defender rose to the fore during her time at the Ramallah-based Lawyers for Justice, representing Palestinian political detainees in PA prisons. In July, she attended a session on behalf of the group at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.

Tala Nasser, from the Addameer prisoners’ rights group, explained that Ayesh’s arrest comes amid a “violent mass arrest campaign” carried out by Israel since October 7.

The fact that the vast majority of the more than 6,900 Palestinians arrested in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since October 7 have been transferred to administrative detention highlights the arbitrariness of Israel’s arrests, she said.

“This campaign includes activists, human rights defenders and political leaders,” Nassar told Al Jazeera, noting that it is “an attempt to silence them and prevent the exposure of the occupation’s crimes across the whole country”.

In December, Israeli forces also arrested political and civil society leader Khalida Jarrar, who was similarly transferred to administrative detention.

Despite releasing all but three Palestinian female detainees during the latest prisoner exchange with Hamas at the end of 2023, the Israeli army rearrested dozens. Some 80 female prisoners are being held today, all of whom are in the Damon Prison.

Among the 80 are dozens of women from the besieged Gaza Strip, but lawyers are forbidden from visiting them or knowing anything about them.

Several reports have emerged of female detainees from Gaza being physically beaten and abused, including an unknown number of them being held at Israeli military bases and not in prison.

Lawyers say conditions for all Palestinian detainees, including women, are unprecedentedly difficult. Eight Palestinian male prisoners have also died or were killed in Israeli custody since October 7, most of them in the days and weeks after their arrest.

Over the past few months, many videos have emerged of Israeli soldiers stripping, torturing and abusing male prisoners from both the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

“It is important to note that every female that is arrested is violated in one way or another,” said Nasser. “They are all facing threats, intensive strip searches, verbal assault and physical violence.”

(continue reading)

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Canada's failure to provide First Nations with clean drinking water constitutes a flagrant human rights violation, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to water and sanitation says. 

The official, following a whirlwind formal Canadian tour, expressed a litany of concerns in a preliminary report delivered verbally on Friday in Ottawa. 

"I finish this almost two-week visit with mixed feelings: admiration but also frustration and even indignation," Pedro Arrojo-Agudo told reporters at the Lord Elgin hotel.

"I have witnessed the marginalization of First Nations on reserves, where in many cases the human rights to drinking water and sanitation are not respected."

Arrojo-Agudo's brisk tour of Canada included stops in Ontario, Nunavut, British Columbia and Alberta. He met with government officials, civil society groups, Indigenous people and others in Ottawa, Iqaluit, Toronto, Fort McMurray, Alta., Vancouver and Smithers, B.C.

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @vague-humanoid, @newsfromstolenland, @palipunk

[alwaysbewoke]

[hussyknee]

Video description:

Preface reading: "Rafeef Ziadah, 12/11/11, London". The video begins showing a young woman on a stage, her hair cut in a sharp, short bob, wearing a gauzy black dress with red accents to match the stage wall behind her. She speaks into a mic in a blend of Canadian and Palestinian accents:

Transcript: "I'll start with this poem I wrote. This poem—when the bombs were dropping on Gaza I was the media spokesperson for the coalition, doing a lot of the organizing, and we'd stayed up to about six o'clock in the morning perfecting every soundbite and by the end of—you know most Palestinians get tired and start pronouncing our "P"s as "B"s so we could become "Balestinians" by the end of the day. So I was practicing my "P"s all night, and the next morning one of the journalists asked me, "Don't you think it would all be fine if you just stopped teaching your children to hate?"

I did not insult the person, I was very polite, but I wrote this poem as a response to these types of questions we Palestinians always get."

Today, my body was a TV’d massacre. Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits. Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits filled enough with statistics to counter measured response; and I perfected my English and I learned my UN resolutions—But still, he asked me, "Ms. Ziadah, don’t you think that everything would be resolved if you would just stop teaching so much hatred to your children? Pause. I look inside of me for strength to be patient but patience is not at the tip of my tongue as the bombs drop over Gaza. Patience has just escaped me. Pause. Smile. "We teach life, sir." Rafeef, remember to smile. Pause. "We teach life, sir. We Palestinians teach life after they have occupied the last sky. We teach life after they have built their settlements and apartheid walls, after the last skies. We teach life, sir." But today, my body was a TV’d massacre made to fit into sound-bites and word limits. And— "Just give us a story, a human story. You see, this is not political. We just want to tell people about you and your people so give us a human story. Don’t mention that word: “apartheid” and “occupation”— This is not political. You have to help me as a journalist to help you tell your story which is not a political story—" Today, my body was a TV’d massacre. "How about you give us a story of a woman in Gaza who needs medication?" "How about you? Do you have enough bone-broken limbs to cover the sun? Hand me over your dead and give me the list of their names in one thousand two hundred word limits." Today, my body was a TV’d massacre that had to fit into sound-bites and word limits and move those that are desensitized to terrorist blood. But they felt sorry. They felt sorry for the cattle over Gaza. So, I give them UN resolutions and statistics and we condemn and we deplore and we reject and— These are not two equal sides: occupier and occupied. And a hundred dead, two hundred dead, and a thousand dead. And between that, war crime and massacre, I vent out words and smile (not exotic), smile (not terrorist) And I recount, I recount a hundred dead, two hundred dead, a thousand dead. Is anyone out there? Will anyone listen? I wish I could wail over their bodies. I wish I could just run barefoot in every refugee camp and hold every child, cover their ears so they wouldn’t have to hear the sound of bombing for the rest of their life the way I do. Today, my body was a TV’d massacre And let me just tell you, there’s nothing your UN resolutions have ever done about this. And no sound-bite—no sound-bite I come up with, no matter how good my English gets—no sound-bite-no sound-bite-no sound-bite-no sound-bite, will bring them back to life, no sound-bite will fix this. We teach life, sir. We teach life, sir. We Palestinians wake up every morning to teach the rest of the world LIFE. Sir.

End transcription.

I think this twitter thread gives some necessary political context for the poem, so you can really understand the cruelty and barbarity of that question, and why Western media insistently shies away from "political" answers:

Cursory Google check corroborates all the info except for the number of peace settlements Israel's rejected. I can't find the exact number off the first page of Google and my head is throbbing too much to look deeper. I'm going to leave that for y'all to fact check.

(I went and looked Rafeef Ziadah up to check whether she's still alive (because that's what we do with Palestinians now) and she's safe in London, teaching Politics and Public Policy at King's College. You can find the rest of her poetry here.)

[workersolidarity]

🇮🇱🇵🇸 💥ISRAELI MILITARY REPEATEDLY USING WHITE PHOSPHORUS ON DENSELY POPULATED GAZA AND LEBANON

Israel's use of White Phosphorus in military operations in densely populated Gaza and Lebanon puts civilians at risk of serious and long-term injuries according to a new Human Rights Watch report on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

White Phosphorus is a munition that uses an allotrope of the chemical element phosphorus to create a smoke, illumination or incindiary effect. White Phosphorus burns upon contact with air and reaches temperatures of 800°C [1'472°F].

White Phosphorus can often cause severe burns and injuries which can than absorb the phosphorus, leading to organ failure.

White Phosphorus can be used for marking, signaling, obscuring, or as an incindiary weapon to set fires that burn incredibly hot, devouring soldiers, equipment, and civilians alike.

"Any time that white phosphorus is used in crowded civilian areas, it poses a high risk of excruciating burns and lifelong suffering,” said Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “White phosphorous is unlawfully indiscriminate when airburst in populated urban areas, where it can burn down houses and cause egregious harm to civilians.”

Human Rights Watch verified videos taken in Lebanon and Gaza on October 10 and 11, 2023, respectively, showing multiple airbursts of artillery-fired white phosphorus over the Gaza City port and two rural locations along the Israel-Lebanon border, and interviewed two people who described an attack in Gaza.

Human Rights Watch spoke to the people who were from the Al-Mina sector of Gaza City who described "observing strikes consistent with the use of white phosphorus."

Both witnesses, who were in the street and an office building at the time, described seeing air strikes with explosions in the sky, followed by white lines falling to the Earth. The attacks took place some time between 11:30pm and 1am local time.

Both witnesses told Human Rights Watch the smell was strong and stifling and led one of the witnesses to approach a nearby window and record the incident from his phone.

"Human Rights Watch reviewed the video and verified that it was taken in Gaza City’s port and identified that the munitions used in the strike were airburst 155mm white phosphorus artillery projectiles," says the Human Rights Watch report.

"The use of white phosphorus in densely populated areas of Gaza violates the requirement under international humanitarian law to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian injury and loss of life."

Israeli authorities refuse to confirm or deny the use of White Phosphorus despite the testimony of witnesses and video recordings.

Attacks using air-delivered incendiary weapons in civilian areas are prohibited under Protocol III of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW). Though weaker restrictions exist for ground launched incindiary weapons.

Protocol III applies only to weapons that are “primarily designed” to set fires or cause burns, and thus some countries believe it excludes certain multipurpose munitions with incendiary effects, notably those containing white phosphorus.

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[politijohn]

Source

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

In Falmouth, a boat called the Bibby Stockholm is being refitted to house refugees. It has already been used for this in other European countries, and one person has already died on board due to lack of appropriate medical care.

The rooms are about the size of a parking space and refugees housed on board (in Portland) will only be allowed limited contact with the wider community, denying them access to community groups and legal advice.

Refugees housed on this boat will have likely already had traumatic experiences at sea as well.

In Falmouth and in Portland, people are already coming together to protest against the use of the boat as a floating prison. But this point needs to be made more widely.

The Bibby Stockholm is inhumane, and we don't want refugees housed on it in our name.

[claraameliapond]

Palestinian child recounting how his parents were brutally shot and killed on purpose in cold blood by IDF in front of him. This is so horriffic that I just can't write the transcript - he's such a sweetheart and nobody deserves anything like this ever- obviously. This horrific reality - Israel is obviously committing genocide in the cruellest, most psychopathic way possible- and Israel is STILL NOT BEING STOPPED. They can commit any number of truly horrifying genocidal cruel evil acts and they're not even getting any consequences for it. Not even condemation in the vast majority of news media globally. Still getting funds and trade.

Everyone pulled out of Russia immediately, following international law- with immediate economic, trade effect - to stop their invasion of Ukraine.

How has it taken 5 months of this - so documented, in addition to the 75+ years of illegal occupation, invasion, settlements and apartheid - brutal apartheid before any government even merely condemns it? Let alone the governments of countries around the world actually applying international law to Israel, in trade agreements etc.

Zionists, Israel uses the holocaust as immunity to all of this but they're not above the law.

What do they have to do to get governments to take action against them properly?

What on earth could it take to get this to actually stop? Because everything that's happened so far should have been enough.

[bellamonde]

HELP SAVE HASSAN FIROUZI

Hassan Firouzi’s life is in danger. He has endured horrendous torture. He was arrested late October. At the time of his arrest his new Iran daughter was only 18 days old. Hassan’s life matters and on this Christmas Day, let’s not forget his family. His daughter deserved to have a father in her life. Please post about Hassan on your social media. Today is a day of spreading love and what better way than to try to save a life. 

Thank you!

[misespinas]

"What does he know of the half-starved wreaths toiling from dawn till dark on the plantations? of mothers shrieking for their children, torn from their arms by slave traders? of young girls dragged down into moral filth? of pools of blood around the whipping post? of hounds trained to tear human flesh? of men screwed into cotton gins to die?"

Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

The social media company formerly known as Twitter has been accused in a revised civil US lawsuit of helping Saudi Arabia commit grave human rights abuses against its users, including by disclosing confidential user data at the request of Saudi authorities at a much higher rate than it has for the US, UK or Canada.

The lawsuit was brought last May against X, as Twitter is now known, by Areej al-Sadhan, the sister of a Saudi aid worker who was forcibly disappeared and then later sentenced to 20 years in jail.

It centers on the events surrounding the infiltration of the California company by three Saudi agents, two of whom were posing as Twitter employees in 2014 and 2015, which ultimately led to the arrest of al-Sadhan’s brother, Abdulrahman, and the exposure of the identity of thousands of anonymous Twitter users, some of whom were later reportedly detained and tortured as part of the government’s crackdown on dissent.

Lawyers for Al-Sadhan updated their claim last week to include new allegations about how Twitter, under the leadership of then chief executive Jack Dorsey, willfully ignored or had knowledge of the Saudi government’s campaign to ferret out critics but – because of financial considerations and efforts to keep close ties to the Saudi government, a top investor in the company – provided assistance to the kingdom.

The new lawsuit details how X had originally been seen seen as a critical vehicle for democratic movements during the Arab spring, and therefore became a source of concern for the Saudi government as early as 2013.

The new legal filing comes days after Human Rights Watch condemned a Saudi court for sentencing a man to death based solely on his Twitter and YouTube activity, which it called an “escalation” of the government’s crackdown on freedom of expression.

The convicted man, Muhammad al-Ghamdi, 54, is the brother of a Saudi scholar and government critic living in exile in the UK. Saudi court records examined by HRW showed that al-Ghamdi was accused of having two accounts, which had a total of 10 followers combined. Both accounts had fewer than 1,000 tweets combined, and contained retweets of well-known critics of the government.

The Saudi crackdown can be traced back to December 2014, as Ahmad Abouammo – who was later convicted in the US for secretly acting as a Saudi agent and lying to the FBI – began accessing and sending confidential user data to Saudi Arabian officials. In the new lawsuit, it is claimed that he sent a message to Saud al-Qahtani, a close aide to Mohammed bin Salman, via the social media company’s messaging system, saying “proactively and reactively we will delete evil, my brother”. It was a reference, the lawsuit claims, to the identification and harming of perceived Saudi dissidents who were using the platform. Al-Qahtani was later accused by the US of being a mastermind behind the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

“Twitter was either aware of this message – brazenly sent on its own platform – or was deliberately ignorant to it,” the revised lawsuit states.

Twitter, now X, does not respond to questions from the press.

The Guardian contacted the company lawyer in the case, Ben Berkowitz of Keker, Van Nest & Peters, but did not receive a response. The Guardian also contacted Dorsey’s new company, Block, Inc, to request a comment from the former Twitter chief executive, but did not receive a response.

After Abouammo resigned in May 2015, he continued to contact Twitter to field requests he was receiving from Bader al-Asaker, a senior aide of Mohammed bin Salman, for the identity of confidential users. He made clear to the company, the lawsuit alleges, that the requests were on behalf of his “old partners in the Saudi government”.

The lawsuit also alleges that Twitter had “ample notice” of security risks to internal personal data, and that there was a threat of insiders illegally accessing it, based on public reporting at the time.

Twitter “did not simply ignore all these red flags … it was aware of the malign campaign”, the lawsuit claims.

On 28 September 2015, Twitter received a complaint from a Saudi user that their accounts had been compromised. But, the lawsuit alleges, the company did not act to bar one of the Saudis who was later accused – Ali Hamad Alzabarah – from having access to confidential user data, even though he had accessed the user’s account previously.

Saudi Arabian authorities, the lawsuit alleges, would formally follow up with Twitter once it received confidential user data from its agents working inside the company, by filing so-called EDRs – or emergency disclosure requests – in order to obtain documentation that confirmed a user’s identity, which it would then use in court. Often those EDRs were approved on the same day.

In May 2015, when two Twitter users tweeted about the kingdom in a way that al-Asaker found objectionable, Albabarah accessed the users’ data within hours. EDRs about the users were then sent, and automatically approved by Twitter, the lawsuit alleges.

Between July and December 2015, Twitter granted the kingdom information requests “significantly more often” than most other countries at that time, including Canada, the UK, Australia and Spain, the lawsuit alleges.

On 5 November 2015, just days before Twitter was confronted by the FBI about its concerns about a Saudi infiltration of the company, it promoted Alzabarah – now a fugitive living in Saudi. In response, Alzabarah sent his Saudi government contact, al-Asaker, a note, conveying his “unimaginable happiness” for the promotion. The note, the lawsuit claims, is evidence that Alzabarah believed al-Asaker had “arranged” or “been influential” in connection to the promotion.

Once Twitter was made aware of the FBI’s concerns, it put Alzabarah on leave and confiscated his laptop, but not his phone, which he has used extensively to contact his Saudi state contacts. Twitter, the lawsuit alleges, “had every reason to expect that Alzabarah would immediately flee to Saudi Arabia, which is exactly what he did.”

The US attorney’s office in San Francisco, which handled the case, did not respond to The Guardian’s request for comment on the company’s handling of the matter.

Twitter would later notify users who had been exposed, telling them their data “may” have been targeted, but did not provide more specific information about the scale or certainty that the breach had, in fact, occurred.

By “failing to give this crucial information, Twitter put thousands of Twitter users at risk,” the lawsuit alleges, claiming that some may have had time to escape the kingdom had they understood the risk. Even once Twitter was aware of the breach, it continued to meet and strategize with Saudi Arabia as one of its vital partners in the region. Dorsey met with bin Salman about six months after the company was made aware of the issue by the FBI, and the two discussed how to “train and qualify Saudi cadres.”

“We believe in Areej’s case and we will zealously prosecute it – but what she wants most is for Saudi Arabia to simply release her brother and let him re-join his family in the United States,” said Jim Walden, a lawyer representing Al-Sadhan from Walden Macht & Haran. “Were that to happen, she and Abdulrahman would gratefully resume their lives and leave justice in God’s hand.”

[alwaysbewoke]

[creature-wizard]

"The universe can manifest ~anything~ you desire-" Buddy do you even comprehend the role that sweatshop labor, the prison industry, human trafficking, and other human rights violations galore plays in producing consumer goods???