Update on 'Xinjiang Assessment' Expected Amid Pressure From Rights Groups

Amid growing pressure from rights groups, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, will update the 49th session of the Human Rights Council on March 7 on her efforts to assess the situation in Xinjiang, a spokesperson from her office told VOA.

In recent weeks, rights activists and U.S. politicians have been pressuring Bachelet to release a report on human rights in Xinjiang, a region in northwest China that is home to Uyghurs who are Muslim and a minority group.

Mainly Western countries, including the United States, and rights organizations accuse China of human rights violations, including forced sterilization of Uyghur women, torture, forced labor and the detention of more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Turkic groups in internment camps in Xinjiang. The U.S. government has described the violations as genocide and crimes against humanity.

The push for the release of the report comes after years of unsuccessful efforts by Bachelet’s office to negotiate the terms of a visit to Xinjiang to assess the human rights situation there.

In a video speech to the 49th United Nations Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva on Monday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said, “The door of Xinjiang is open, and we welcome people from all countries to visit Xinjiang and have exchanges.”

He went on to refute allegations of abuse and said, “The so-called genocide, forced labor and religious repression, are lies that are completely fabricated.”
China says the facilities in Xinjiang are only vocational training centers – and that Beijing’s Xinjiang policies are aimed at fighting extremism, terrorism and separatism.

While discussions between Bachelet’s office and Beijing are ongoing, “the parameters for a visit will have to be such that the High Commissioner has unfettered, meaningful access, including unsupervised interviews with civil society,” the high commissioner’s spokesperson, Liz Throssell, told VOA in an email.

Doubtful Uyghurs

Uyghurs’ rights groups are doubtful there will be changes to the status quo.
“We don’t expect the visit will take place soon, given that the high commissioner has failed to reach an agreement with the government of China for the past three years,” said Zumretay Arkin, program and advocacy manager at the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress.

A Uyghur government official in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, told VOA that for any Uyghur “to be able to speak [freely] and tell what is happening, they [would] have to be out” of China.

“There’s a tragedy in every [Uyghur] family, at least someone has disappeared without a trace. But I can’t tell you in detail,” the Uyghur official who requested anonymity for his safety said. “No one is calm. Every family is weeping over someone.”

Abdulhakim Idris, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Uyghur Studies, accuses Bachelet of being mostly passive on Uyghur human rights since she assumed her position in September 2018.

“These are not only my words; even her official told us that she had been disregarding the reports and documents detailing Uyghur human rights” in China, Idris told VOA.

Idris said that in late 2018, he and other Uyghur rights activists met a Bachelet office staffer in Geneva who was working on the China human rights issue.
“We were told that when reports and documents got into her office, the reports they had submitted would be ignored,” Idris said.

“Every year Uyghurs hoped that on behalf of the U.N., Bachelet would say something about the Uyghurs’ dire human rights situation,” Idris said. “All these years, Bachelet had been careful not to anger China, that’s why she has been delaying this urgent report.”

In an email, Bachelet’s office told VOA the accusations are false and that since allegations of “human rights violations in Xinjiang emerged, the U.N. Human Rights Office has been consistently gathering, documenting and analyzing the information that has come to our attention.” Bachelet’s office also said she has been working on visiting Xinjiang “based on meaningful access” while continuing to monitor the situation and assess the situation there remotely.

Last September, Bachelet expressed regret at not making any progress on her “efforts to seek meaningful access to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region” to probe human rights.

“In the meantime, my office is finalizing its assessment of the available information on allegations of serious human rights violations in that region, with a view to making it public,” Bachelet said at the opening of the Human Rights Council in September in Geneva.

In December, after an unofficial tribunal in London said that China has “committed genocide and crimes against humanity and torture against Uyghurs, Kazakh and other ethnic minority citizens” in Xinjiang, a spokesperson for the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Rupert Colville, said that Bachelet had hoped to publish the report on Xinjiang in the coming weeks.

Adrian Zenz is director and senior fellow of China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington. Zenz said the only way to make genuine progress on documenting China’s actions would be to take Uyghurs out of Xinjiang for completely unsupervised conversations with U.N. officials.

However, if it is a visit as suggested by Wang, Beijing will “closely control what people see on the ground, and that’s all the more because actually a fairly substantial number of internment camps have been securitized or closed down,” Zenz told VOA. “People have been shifted into forced labor or sentenced to long-term prisons.”

Abortion Rights Bill Fails to Pass Procedural Vote in US Senate

A bill to protect the right to have an abortion in the United States died in the Senate on Monday after it failed to garner enough Republican support to pass a procedural vote.

While the Women’s Health Protection Act was expected to fail, Democratic leaders were under pressure from constituents to put it to a vote anyway in a show of support for federal abortion rights, as the U.S. Supreme Court could soon upend those rights.

Reproductive rights advocates see federal legislation as possibly the best chance to codify the right to terminate pregnancy in the United States, particularly after the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative justices signaled, they could soon cut constitutional protections.

The bill would have needed several Republicans’ support to reach the necessary 60-vote threshold to overcome a filibuster. The vote was 48-46. Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat, voted against the bill, as did Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, moderate Republicans who have supported limited abortion rights.

“Abortion is a fundamental right and women’s decisions over women’s health care belong to women, not to extremist right-wing legislators,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters ahead of Monday’s vote.

Abortion opponents characterized the bill as radical and said it would nullify state laws that have been passed to restrict abortions.

“It’s extreme. It’s an egregious violation of the most fundamental of all human rights, and that is the right to life,” Republican Senator Steve Daines of Montana said of the bill in debate on Monday.

The Women’s Health Protection Act, co-sponsored by 48 Senate Democrats, stated that healthcare providers should be able to provide abortions without a number of barriers, including restrictions on abortions prior to fetal viability, which many states currently have in place. It proposed that the U.S. attorney general could sue any state or government official who violated its terms.

Abortion rights advocates said the fact that the Senate was holding the vote at all was a victory, since it forced senators to go on the record for their constituents to judge.

Abortion is poised to be a key campaign issue for members of Congress running for re-election in 2022.

“Every American deserves to know where their senator stands on an issue as important as the right to choose,” Schumer told reporters.

The right to have an abortion prior to fetal viability, typically around 23 or 24 weeks, has been protected under the Constitution since the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade.

In December, the Supreme Court signaled its willingness to undermine Roe v. Wade and permit a Mississippi ban on abortion after 15 weeks. The court’s decision in that case is expected in late spring.

Some 26 states would move to immediately ban abortion if Roe is overturned, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights advocacy research group.

3 Former Officers Convicted of Rights Violations in Floyd Killing

st. paul, minnesota — 

Three former Minneapolis police officers have been convicted of violating George Floyd’s civil rights.

Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane were charged with depriving Floyd of his right to medical care when Officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for 9½ minutes as the 46-year-old Black man was handcuffed and face down on the street on May 25, 2020.

Thao and Lane were also charged with failing to intervene to stop Chauvin.

The videotaped killing sparked protests in Minneapolis that spread around the globe as part of reckoning over racial injustice. Chauvin was convicted of murder last year in state court and pleaded guilty in December in the federal case.

Kueng knelt on Floyd’s back, Lane held his legs and Thao kept bystanders back.

Kueng and Lane both said they deferred to Chauvin as the senior officer at the scene. Thao testified that he relied on the other officers to care for Floyd’s medical needs as his attention was elsewhere.

Conviction of a federal civil rights violation that results in death is punishable by life in prison or even death, but such sentences are extremely rare.

During the monthlong trial, prosecutors sought to show that the officers violated their training, including when they failed to move Floyd or give him CPR. Prosecutors argued that Floyd’s condition was so serious that even bystanders without basic medical training could see he needed help.

Lane, Kueng and Thao also face a separate trial in June on state charges alleging that they aided and abetted murder and manslaughter.

US Offshore Wind Rights Auction Generates Record Bids

WASHINGTON — 

The use of wind to generate electricity for the United States was thrust forward Wednesday with the largest-ever offering by the federal government of offshore development rights.

Bidding for the 197,000 hectares of the New York Bight — an area of shallow waters between the coasts of Long Island (in New York state) and the state of New Jersey — attracted record-setting prices, according to the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

“This auction today is a testament to how attractive the U.S. market is,” said Fred Zalcman, director of the New York Offshore Wind Alliance.

Europe is much further along than North America in developing lease areas for offshore wind farms.

There are two small offshore wind facilities in the United States off the coasts of the states of Rhode Island and Virginia. Two more commercial-scale projects were recently approved for development.

“We’re really just at the beginning of a process here. We hope to apply the lessons learned from Europe and take advantage of the cost savings achieved in Europe,” Zalcman told VOA.

Officials say turbines erected in the set of six leases that went up for bidding Wednesday, the first auction conducted during the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, could eventually provide power for nearly 2 million residences.

Wednesday’s top bids totaled more than $1.5 billion. The largest single lease area offered — totaling nearly 51,000 hectares and located about 50 kilometers off the New Jersey coast — had attracted a record-busting $410 million, with bidding to resume Thursday morning.

The previous auction was held in 2018 during the administration of former President Donald Trump. It was considered a success, with three leases off the coast of the state of Massachusetts bringing in a collective record-breaking $405 million for rights to develop 158,000 hectares south of Martha’s Vineyard, with a potential generating capacity of more than 4.1 gigawatts, enough to supply power to about 1.5 million homes.

FILE – Three of Deepwater Wind’s five turbines stand in the water off Block Island, R.I, the nation’s first offshore wind farm on Aug. 15, 2016.

Trump, a Republican, repeatedly expressed, at best, skepticism toward wind as a viable renewable source to supply America’s energy needs. He derided “windmills,” saying he had been told the noise from their blades “causes cancer” and “it’s like a graveyard for birds.”

Biden, a Democrat, has veered in a different direction, embracing wind as part of his clean energy ambitions and setting a goal of 30 gigawatts of capacity in the United States by the year 2030.

In his first week in office in 2021, Biden signed an executive order to expand opportunities for the offshore wind industry, predicting, according to the White House, the projects “will create good-paying union jobs” and “spawn new supply chains that stretch into America’s heartland.”

The area included in the ongoing auction, which began with 25 qualified bidders, was cut back by about one-fourth from what was initially proposed last year due to concerns about the potential impact on commercial fishing and military interests.

State and federal officials, according to Zalcman, have been addressing concerns of other ocean users, including recreational and commercial fishers, navigators and the shipping industry, and taking into consideration visual impacts to coastal communities, and concerns of environmental groups about migratory species, such as the North Atlantic right whale.

A group of residents of the New Jersey summer colony of Long Beach last month sued BOEM over the New York Bight leasing plans, contending the massive wind farm would permanently mar their beautiful view from the beach, hurt the area’s tourism economy and harm property values.

Bob Stern, the president of Save Long Beach Island, told VOA on Wednesday that the organization “is not opposed to offshore wind energy but believes that the federal government’s process of selecting ocean areas for turbine placement is flawed.”

Stern explained that the group’s lawsuit challenges the federal government agency’s selection of “wind energy areas” for offshore wind turbines which “should have been preceded and supported by a structured regional environmental impact statement process with full disclosure of impacts and public input.”

The Sierra Club is terming the New York Bight auction a historic major stride forward for clean energy.

“This lease sale is the first to include stipulations setting out responsibilities for project developers to report on their engagement with stakeholders to minimize conflicting uses, negotiation of project labor agreements, and the development of offshore wind-related manufacturing and supply chain services,” said Allison Considine, a senior campaign representative of the national environmental organization.

A preeminent concern is ensuring that these projects are done responsibly, said Zalcman of the New York Offshore Wind Alliance, of which the Sierra Club is a member.

How developers configure the wind farms will be subject to another rigorous round of environmental review before they are able to erect the huge structures.

US Supreme Court Takes Up Clash Between Religion and LGBT Rights

WASHINGTON — 

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday took up a major new legal fight pitting religious beliefs against LGBT rights, agreeing to hear an evangelical Christian web designer’s free speech claim that she cannot be forced under a Colorado anti-discrimination law to produce websites for same-sex marriages.

The justices agreed to hear Denver-area business owner Lorie Smith’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling rejecting her bid for an exemption from a Colorado law barring discrimination based on sexual orientation and certain other factors. The case follows the Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in favor of a Christian Denver-area baker who refused on religious grounds to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.

Smith’s case gives the justices an opportunity to answer a question that has been raised in other disputes including the baker case but never definitively resolved: can people refuse service to customers in violation of public accommodation laws based on the idea that fulfilling a creative act such as designing a website or baking a cake is a form of free speech under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.

“The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently held that anti-discrimination laws, like Colorado’s, apply to all businesses selling goods and services. Companies cannot turn away LGBT customers just because of who they are,” said Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat.

Colorado’s anti-discrimination law bars anyone from refusing “goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages or accommodations” based among other things on sexual orientation, age, race, gender and religion. Colorado is among 21 U.S. states that have measures explicitly barring discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in public accommodations.

These laws pose “a clear and present danger to every American’s constitutionally protected freedoms and the very existence of a diverse and free nation,” said Kristen Waggoner, general counsel of the conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents Smith.

“Colorado has weaponized its law to silence speech it disagrees with, to compel speech it approves of, and to punish anyone who dares to dissent,” Waggoner added.

The Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, has become increasingly supportive of religious rights and related free speech claims in recent years even as it has backed LGBT rights in other cases.

The justices declined to take up a separate question concerning whether Smith has a religious rights claim, also under the First Amendment. Smith had asked the court to overturn its important 1990 ruling that limited the ability of people to cite their religious beliefs in seeking exemptions from laws that apply to everyone.

Smith runs a web design business called 303 Creative that she wants to operate in accordance with her Christian faith. She believes that marriage should be limited to opposite-sex couples, a view shared by many conservative Christians.

Before adding wedding websites to the services she offered customers, Smith sued Colorado’s civil rights commission and other officials in 2016 because of her concern she would be punished under the anti-discrimination law.

Smith’s lawyers have said that any state action punishing her for refusing to design websites for gay weddings violates her right to religious expression and her free speech rights.

Jennifer Pizer, senior counsel at LGBT rights group Lambda Legal, said the Supreme Court should “reaffirm and apply longstanding constitutional precedent that our freedoms of religion and speech are not a license to discriminate when operating a business.”

Colorado officials have said they never investigated Smith’s company and saw no evidence that anyone ever actually asked her to design a website for a same-sex wedding. Lower courts backed Colorado, including the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a July 2021 ruling.

The justices are set to hear oral arguments and decide the case in the Supreme Court’s next term, which begins in October and ends in June 2023.

The Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide in 2015 and in 2020 expanded protections for LGBT workers under federal law. The Supreme Court has struggled to resolve cases in which conservative religious opposition to LGBT rights has clashed with situations in which LGBT people are seeking to exercise their own rights.

Smith’s appeal arises from a dispute similar to the one that prompted the Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling on narrow legal grounds siding with a Colorado baker named Jack Phillips. The court said in that case that Colorado’s civil rights commission, which imposed sanctions on Phillips for discrimination, was motivated by anti-religious bias.

Similar legal fights involving other small business including a wedding photographer and a calligrapher owners have been waged in other states.

Human Rights? China Won that Winter Olympics Battle. Almost.

ZHANGJIAKOU, China — 

When three-time Olympian Gus Kenworthy took the remarkable, perhaps even brave decision to speak out against “human rights atrocities” while still in China at the Winter Games, the self-proclaimed “loud and obnoxious” British skier also proved that other athletes, had they chosen, perhaps could have used their Olympic platform to pipe up, too.

Because Kenworthy wasn’t hauled away and imprisoned, as Chinese critics of the ruling Communist Party routinely are. Doing so would have generated exactly the sort of global focus on the Chinese government’s authoritarian methods that it sought to avoid while global sports’ biggest show was in town.

And with the notable exception of Kenworthy, China largely accomplished that mission.

Olympians with any qualms about chasing medals in a country accused of genocide against its Muslim Uyghur population and of other abuses kept their views on those topics to themselves for the durations of their stay. And perhaps for good reason: They faced vague but, as it turned out, undeployed Chinese threats of punishment, constant surveillance and the sobering example of tennis star Peng Shuai’s difficulties after she voiced allegations of forced sex against a Communist Party official.

FILE – China’s Peng Shuai reacts during her first round singles match against Japan’s Nao Hibino at the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Australia on Jan. 21, 2020.

“We have seen an effective silencing of 2,800 athletes, and that’s scary,” said Noah Hoffman, a former U.S. Olympic skier and board member of the Global Athlete advocacy group pushing for Olympic reform.

FILE- Noah Hoffman, of the United States, competes during the men’s 15km freestyle cross-country skiing competition at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Friday, Feb. 16, 2018.

Kenworthy, speaking to The Associated Press before his 8th-place finish in the halfpipe final on the Games’ penultimate day, laid out why.

“We’re in China, so we play by China’s rules. And China makes their rules as they go, and they certainly have the power to kind of do whatever they want: Hold an athlete, stop an athlete from leaving, stop an athlete from competing,” he said.

“I’ve also been advised to sort of tread lightly while I am here and that’s what I am trying to do.”

Immediately after competing, however, the proudly gay athlete’s gloves came off.

He prefaced criticism with praise for China’s “incredible job with this Olympics” and carefully calibrated his words. But unlike other Olympians, he couldn’t bite his tongue until he got home. Kenworthy aimed jabs not only at the host country’s rights abuses and “poor stance on LGBTQ rights” but also at other athletes he said try “to appeal to the masses” and avoid ruffling feathers.

“I’ve already kind of accepted that that’s not what I’m gonna do,” he said. “I’m just gonna speak my truth.”

In fairness, Olympians found themselves squeezed on all sides in Beijing. Campaigners abroad hoped they would spark global outrage over the imprisonment in re-education camps of an estimated 1 million people or more, most of them Uyghurs. China, backed to the hilt by the International Olympic Committee, didn’t want critical voices to be heard. And their own voices told athletes to focus, focus, focus on the pursuit of Olympic success that they, their coaches and families sacrificed for.

The sweep and vagueness of a Chinese official’s threat before the Games of “certain punishment” for “any behavior or speech that is against the Olympic spirit” appeared to have a particularly sobering effect on Beijing-bound teams. Campaigners who met with athletes in the United States in the weeks before their departure, lobbying them about Uyghurs and the crushing of dissent in Tibet and Hong Kong, noticed the chill.

“Prior to the statement, we had been engaging with quite a few athletes,” said Pema Doma, campaigns director at Students for a Free Tibet. They “were expressing a lot of interest in learning more and being engaged in the human rights issue.”

Afterward, “there was a very, very distinct difference” and “one athlete even said to an activist directly: ‘I’ve been instructed not to take anything from you or speak to you,'” she said in a phone interview.

Other concerns also weighed on Olympians, way beyond the usual anxieties that often come with travel to a foreign land, away from home comforts.

Warnings of possible cyber-snooping by Chinese security services and team advisories that athletes leave electronic devices at home were alarming for a generation weaned on social media and constant connectivity with their worlds.

Also wearing were daily coronavirus tests that were mandatory — and invasive, taken with swabs to the back of the throat — for all Olympians, locked inside a tightly policed bubble of health restrictions to prevent infection spreads. The penalty for testing positive was possible quarantine and missed competition, a terrible blow for winter athletes who often toil outside of the limelight, except every four years at the Games.

“Who knows where those tests go, who handles the results,” Kenworthy said. “It’s definitely in the back of the mind.”

“And there’s like all the cybersecurity stuff. It is concerning,” he told The AP.

Often, athletes simply blanked when asked about human rights, saying they weren’t qualified to speak on the issue or were focused on competition, and hunkered down.

FILE- Sanne In ‘t Hof of the Netherlands competes in the women’s speedskating 5,000-meter race at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022, in Beijing.

On Twitter, Dutch speedskater Sanne in ‘t Hof blocked, unblocked and then blocked again a Uyghur living in the Netherlands who posted critical comments of Olympians in what he called “genocide” Games. Mirehmet Ablet shared a screengrab with The AP showing that the skater had barred him from accessing her account, where she tweeted that she “enjoyed every second!’ of her first Olympics. Ablet’s brother was arrested in 2017 in the Uyghur homeland of Xinjiang in far western China, and Ablet doesn’t know where he’s now held.

Other athletes also were effusive in praising their China experience. “Nothing short of amazing,” said U.S. speedskating bronze-medal winner Brittany Bowe.

FILE- Brittany Bowe of the United States reacts after her heat in the women’s speedskating 1,500-meter race at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Monday, Feb. 7, 2022, in Beijing.

Hoffman, who competed for the U.S. at the 2014 and 2018 Games, said internal politics within teams may also have dissuaded athletes from speaking critically. Coaches can bench athletes who bring unwanted attention and “there’s pressure from your teammates to not cause a distraction,” he said in a phone interview. Athletes with self-confidence dented by sub-par performances may also have felt that they’d lost any platform.

“There’s lots of really subtle pressure,” Hoffman said.

He expects some athletes won’t be critical once home, so as to not disrespect the cheerful and helpful Games workers.

But he’s hopeful others will speak up on their return and that “we do get a chorus.”

Feeling unmuzzled, some already are.

FILE- Nils van der Poel of Sweden reacts after breaking his own world record in the men’s speedskating 10,000-meter race at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Friday, Feb. 11, 2022, in Beijing.

Back in Sweden with his two gold medals in speedskating, Nils van der Poel told the Aftonbladet newspaper that although he had “a very nice experience behind the scenes,” hosting the Games in China was “terrible.” He drew parallels with the 1936 Summer Olympics in Nazi Germany and Russia hosting the Sochi Olympics before seizing control of the Crimean peninsula in 2014.

“It is extremely irresponsible,” van der Poel said, “to give it to a country that violates human rights as clearly as the Chinese regime does.”

UN Chief 'Determined' Human Rights Chief Visit Xinjiang

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday he is “determined” that his human rights chief should conduct a “credible” visit to China’s semi-autonomous Xinjiang province, where ethnic Uyghur and Turkic Muslim minorities live.

“It is in the interest of China — if they are convinced that they are not doing what people accuse them to do — it is in the interest of China to have a credible visit of the high commissioner, and we will be doing everything we can to make sure that it happens,” Guterres said. “If it won’t happen, of course the high commissioner will take the decisions that correspond to her mandate.”

The U.N. chief made the remarks in Germany at the Munich Security Conference, in response to a question from the conference chairman, Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has been trying to negotiate a visit to Xinjiang for the past three years. Chinese officials said recently that she would be allowed to come to have an exchange, but not an investigation. Beijing denies it violates the rights of Uyghurs and says it is combating terrorism.

Rights groups and the U.S. government accuse Beijing of serious abuses of Uyghur rights, including torture, forced sterilization, sexual violence and forced separation of children. They are subjected to widespread surveillance and more than a million Uyghurs have been sent to detention camps.

China has dismissed the accusations as groundless and says Xinjiang enjoys stability, development and prosperity. Beijing has also lashed out at other nations for interfering in its internal affairs.

Guterres visited Beijing earlier this month as a guest of the International Olympic Committee for the opening ceremony of the Winter Games. He also had a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, during which his spokesman said he told them he expects the government to allow a “credible visit” for Bachelet.

“What I have been telling the Chinese authorities, and I’m telling publicly, is that in Xinjiang human rights must be fully respected, but not only human rights must be fully respected, policies must guarantee that the identity – the cultural and religious identity of minorities is respected — and at the same time they have opportunities to be part of the society as a whole,” the secretary-general said in Munich.

Human Rights Watch welcomed the U.N. chief’s remarks.

“These are Guterres’ strongest remarks on the human rights crisis in Xinjiang to date,” Human Rights Watch U.N. Director Louis Charbonneau told VOA. “Obviously a “credible” visit by the high commissioner has to mean unfettered and unmanaged access in Xinjiang, which the secretary-general clearly recognizes.”

Charbonneau noted that the Chinese government has not yet been willing to grant that.

“The Chinese have said they’ve maintained a clear and consistent position, and there are no signs of change of heart in Beijing,” he said. “But whether or not the high commissioner visits China, she should publish her long-delayed report on Xinjiang immediately. There’s no reason to keep denying member states her office’s assessment of the massive and widespread human rights abuses in Xinjiang, which we at Human Rights Watch have determined amount to crimes against humanity.”

A report on the situation of the Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities has been expected from Bachelet’s office for some time, but so far it has not come out.

RFE/RL seeks hearing from European Court of Human Rights in its priority case against Russia – USAGM

RFE/RL seeks hearing from European Court of Human Rights in its priority case against Russia

February 17, 2022

Washington, D.C. — Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Moscow Bureau (RFE/RL) and its general director, Andrey Shary, filed their final written submission with the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) on February 9, asking the Court for a hearing to consider the merits. The brief was submitted in response to the Russian government’s “Written Observations” on RFE/RL’s legal case challenging Russia’s “foreign agent” laws, which have resulted in fines worth millions of dollars being imposed on the bureau and Mr. Shary since January 2021.

In their brief, RFE/RL has maintained its argument that Russia’s “foreign agent” content-labeling law and associated fines violate the right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which Russia is legally bound to uphold. RFE/RL also updated the Court on the worsening climate for its journalists in Russia, as evidenced by the addition of numerous reporters to the registry of “foreign agents,” the issuance of more than 70 demands from Russia’s media regulator that RFE/RL delete from its websites articles about investigations by Alexey Navalny’s organization, and a legally groundless judgment against RFE/RL for accurately reporting on Marshal Georgy Zhukov’s recommendation during World War II that surrendering soldiers and their families be threatened with execution.

RFE/RL President Jamie Fly said, “The Kremlin, in its effort to exert complete information control over the Russian public, is attempting to criminalize journalism and smear individual Russian journalists as traitors. We urge the European Court of Human Rights to consider and rule on the legality of the ‘foreign agent’ laws which are threatening the fundamental human rights of our journalists and every single Russian citizen.”

On June 17, 2021, the ECHR granted the RFE/RL case “priority” status – which it reserves for the most important, serious, and urgent cases – within a month of its submission, and formally communicated its acceptance to the government of Russia. Russia filed its “Written Observations” in response to the case this past November.

Since January 2021, Russian regulators have issued more than one thousand administrative cases against RFE/RL and Mr. Shary in the Russian courts, carrying fines that may total $13.4 million (RUB 1 billion). Russian court bailiffs visited RFE/RL’s Moscow bureau twice to notify the organization about enforcement proceedings for the fines arising from RFE/RL’s refusal to label its content. RFE/RL’s Russian bank accounts were frozen by court order in May 2021. RFE/RL has appealed hundreds of cases, but not a single court has upheld RFE/RL’s legal challenges or decreased the levels of fines imposed by Roskomnadzor.

Since 2017, when Russia expanded its controversial “foreign agent” laws to include media outlets, nine of RFE/RL’s news outlets have been designated “foreign agents” by the Russian Ministry of Justice, as have eighteen freelance journalists associated with RFE/RL. The law on “foreign agents” has been condemned by EU High Commissioner Josep Borrell, the European Parliament, the U.S. Department of State, and other international bodies as an infringement of fundamental freedoms.

RFE/RL is represented in the European Court of Human Rights by English barristers Can Yeginsu and Ian McDonald, instructed by the international law firm, Covington & Burling LLP.

Rights Groups Urge Crack Down on US Prison Surveillance Technology

Dozens of rights groups are demanding a crackdown on an artificial intelligence system used to eavesdrop on U.S. prisoners’ phone calls, after a Thomson Reuters Foundation investigation highlighted the risk of rights violations.

Documents from eight states showed prison and jail authorities were using surveillance software called Verus, which scans for key words and leverages Amazon’s voice-to-text transcription service, to monitor prisoners’ phone calls.

California-based LEO Technologies, which operates Verus, says it has scanned close to 300 million minutes of calls going in and out of prisons and jails in the United States, describing the tool as a way to fight crime and help keep inmates safe.

But a coalition of civil and digital rights groups said the surveillance sometimes overstepped legal limits by targeting conversations unrelated to the safety and security of detention facilities, or possible criminal activity.

“This surveillance infringes the rights of incarcerated Americans, many of whom have not been convicted and are still working on their defenses, as well as those of their families, friends, and loved ones,” the groups wrote in a joint letter.

Four different letters were sent to the attorney general’s office in New York State, the state’s Inspector General and the federal Department of Justice (DOJ).

The DOJ provided a $700,000 grant to the sheriff’s office in Suffolk County, New York, to implement a pilot of the AI-powered voice-to-text surveillance system in 2020.

Undersheriff Kevin Catalina, who helps run the Verus program in Suffolk, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the system is crucial for alerting jail authorities to people who are suicidal and to identify gang members behind bars.

“It saves lives,” he said.

A DOJ official said the department is reviewing technology programs receiving federal funding to ensure they are enhancing public safety while respecting constitutional rights.

A spokesperson for the New York State Inspector General’s Office said in emailed comments that they would review the letter and “thoroughly investigate” complaints that are sent in.

More than 50 advocacy groups are part of the campaign, among them the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Worth Rises, the Innocence Project, and Access Now.

They also raised concerns about the prison phone call company Securus, and the possible recording of conversations protected by attorney-client privilege.

A Securus spokesperson said the company is committed to protecting civil liberties, that users can set attorney numbers to private – meaning calls are not recorded and cannot be monitored – and that they act immediately to delete “inadvertent” recordings.

A representative for LEO did not respond to requests for comment on the letters.

“It seems like the regulators have been asleep at the switch at the federal, state and local level,” said Albert Fox Cahn, head of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, which helped draft the letter.

‘Unproven, invasive, and biased’

As Suffolk County was trialing Verus, it also expanded beyond New York, winning state contracts in Georgia and Texas, and in local sheriff’s departments across the United States.

The rights groups urged regulators to block further expansion of surveillance tools in prisons and jails, saying they have the potential to produce racial bias and undermine privacy rights, without any clear track record of success.

In their letter addressed to the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, the groups cited research showing voice-to-text tools have a much higher error rate for Black voices. Black people are disproportionately represented among U.S. prisoners.

“Even absent discrimination, Verus and similar technologies exceed prisons and jails’ lawful surveillance powers,” they wrote.

Documents obtained by the Thomson Reuters Foundation from the pilot site in Suffolk County showed Verus was used to analyze more than 2.5 million calls between its launch in April 2019 and May 2020 – leading to 96 “actionable intelligence reports.”

While Catalina did not specify how many prisoners had been disciplined or faced charges based on those leads, he said the tool had helped prevent 86 suicides.

The rights groups also raised concerns about mission creep, noting the technology had been used to identify conversations that could flag problems for prison or jail administrators – such as complaints about their response to COVID-19.

Catalina said the sheriff’s office reviews all its surveillance strategies on a monthly basis to make sure that their terms used in the Verus system are appropriate, and that it has never found any issues.

The surveillance of detainees’ phone calls is especially troubling in county jails, where people are frequently held before being convicted of any crime, said Bianca Tylek, executive director of criminal justice nonprofit Worth Rises.

“People who are innocent, (who) have the presumption of innocence, who cannot afford bail … should not be subjected to surveillance that no one else is,” said Tylek.

Besides infringing the privacy of incarcerated people and their relatives, AI-powered surveillance in prisons and jails could also lead to increases in the cost of phone calls for prisoners, rights campaigners fear.

The average 15-minute phone call from a jail already costs $5.74, according to a 2019 report from the Prison Policy Initiative, while 2015 research found more than a third of families reported getting into debt to pay for calls or visits.

Worth Rises, which has been pushing to reduce the cost of prison phone calls across the country, is urging state and local law enforcement to offer calls for free.

Emails between LEO and sheriff’s offices, which were obtained through public records requests, show use of LEO’s Verus system could cost as much as 8 cents per minute.

They also give a picture of how the company worked in tandem with law enforcement officials to raise funds – enlisting PR personnel, helping draft federal grant proposals, and making appeals to lawmakers.

In Suffolk County, the Sheriff’s office discussed plans to pass the cost onto prisoners themselves if grant funding ran out, the emails reveal.

The office said that while it had considered passing along the costs to prisoners, they ultimately decided not to.

Tylek said the federal government should not be funding pilots involving systems like Verus, warning that authorities rarely relinquish surveillance powers once they have been granted.

“It (becomes) almost impossible to pull it out,” she said.

On Voting Rights, Biden's Power to Act on His Own Is Limited

WASHINGTON — 

As Republicans impose new restrictions on ballot access in several states, U. S. President Joe Biden has no easy options for safeguarding voting rights, despite rising pressure from frustrated activists.

Unlike on other issues such as immigration or environmental protection, the White House has little leverage without congressional action as the November elections creep up.

“If there were some sort of easily available presidential power on this, others would have done it,” said Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a Harvard Law School professor, who researches election law. “There is no significant unilateral authority here.”

Nine months before elections that will determine control of Congress, voting rights advocates are worried there’s not enough time to fend off state laws and policies that make it harder to vote. They view the changes as a subtler form of past ballot restrictions such as literacy tests and poll taxes that were used to disenfranchise Black voters, a vital Democratic constituency.

Biden did issue an executive order last March that expanded access to voter registration and election information. The order is designed to make it easier for people in federal custody to register to vote, improve tracking of military ballots and provide better access for Americans with disabilities.

But to do more than that, Biden would have to rely on obscure and controversial constitutional provisions that probably could not take effect in time anyway, Stephanopoulos said. And the further Biden were to go to push the issue of voting rights, the more he could face criticism for overstepping his authority.

“It’s very hard for a president to weigh in,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. “Everything is being done at a state-by-state level.”

So while Biden may be able to take some small actions around the edges, Brinkley said, “if he tries something extraordinary, it will be tied up in the courts for years.”

Americans have grown accustomed to seeing presidents act unilaterally when they hit roadblocks in Congress. President Barack Obama resorted to a wave of executive actions branded as “we can’t wait.” He flexed his authority to increase environmental regulations and shield from deportation young immigrants who were brought to the country illegally.

There’s no equivalent legal leverage for Biden to advance voting rights policies.

Marc Morial, leader of the National Urban League, was skeptical that executive actions — which can be reversed by a future president as quickly as they were imposed by a predecessor — could be sufficient anyway.

“An executive order or an executive action is not a replacement or a substitute or even a credible alternative to legislation to protect voting rights and democracy,” he said.

But so far, legislation has not been a workable option for Democrats.

Democrats have written voting legislation that would usher in the biggest overhaul of U.S. elections in a generation by striking down hurdles to voting enacted in the name of election security. The plan would create national election standards that would trump state-level laws and restore the ability of the Justice Department to police election laws in states with a history of discrimination.

Republicans said the proposed changes were not aimed at fairness but at giving Democrats an advantage in elections. And Democrats were unsuccessful at changing Senate rules to allow the slim Democratic majority in the chamber to pass the laws on their own.

Republicans last year pushed through 33 laws creating new voting limits in 19 states, and five other states have bills that seek to restrict voting. The effort is motivated in part by a growing and widespread denial of President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss.

Republicans who have fallen in line behind Trump’s election lies are separately promoting efforts to influence future elections by installing sympathetic leaders in local election posts and by backing for elective office some of those who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Democrats and voting rights advocates are looking to the Justice Department as their best chance to ensure elections are free and fair. But there’s a political divide over what “free and fair” means in a country where millions believe false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

The department has lawyers dedicated to enforcing civil voting statues, and Attorney General Merrick Garland has made it a priority.

But the department is limited in what it can do, following a 2013 Supreme Court decision that dismantled part of the civil rights-era Voting Rights Act, which required states with a history of discrimination to get approval for changes to election laws.

Separately, the Justice Department also has a role in ensuring fair elections but that, too, has been complicated by politics in recent years.

There has been increasing skittishness among election administrators over the department’s role after then-Attorney General William Barr told prosecutors to investigate election fraud claims before the 2020 election was certified. Barr cited concern over potential widespread voter fraud because of an increase in mail ballots during the pandemic, but he later declared there had been no widespread fraud.

Garland’s Justice Department has sued Georgia over the state’s new election law, alleging Republican state lawmakers rushed through a sweeping overhaul with an intent to deny Black voters equal access to the ballot. The Justice Department has also brought a suit against Texas over its newly-drawn congressional districts.

But the Supreme Court this past week signaled a willingness to side with the GOP on such issues.

The high court put on hold a lower court ruling that Alabama must draw new congressional districts before the 2022 elections to increase Black voting power. The court’s action means the upcoming elections will be conducted under a map drawn by Alabama’s Republican-controlled Legislature that contains one majority-Black district in a state in which more than one-quarter of the population is Black.

The three-judge lower court, which includes two judges appointed by Trump, had ruled that the state had probably violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the political power of Black voters.

NAACP President Derrick Johnson said the Supreme Court has undercut the ability of the federal government to protect voting rights, and he still believes the best chance for long-term change is to get legislation through Congress.

“The Justice Department is doing as much as they can with one hand tied behind their back,” he said. He noted the Voting Rights Act only became law after previous attempts failed.

“We don’t stop because the first attempt didn’t work.”

Human Rights, Economic Ties Drive Decisions to Boycott – or Not – 2022 Olympics

SAN FRANCISCO — 

As much as China and the International Olympic Committee have pushed for the Olympic Games to be a neutral event, political controversy and boycotts of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics started months before Friday’s opening ceremonies.

But not everyone’s enmeshed in politics.

Boycott supporters, including human rights groups, are calling out Beijing over perceived strong-arm tactics toward Taiwan, anti-Beijing protesters in the Chinese territory of Hong Kong and the largely Muslim Uyghur population in the Chinese Xinjiang region.

Yet analysts say many developing countries value their economic ties with China, political divides notwithstanding, so they sent officials as well as athletes to stay on Beijing’s good side.

Australia has avoided sending government officials to the Feb. 4-20 Games over its belief that China is abusing human rights and refusing to hold talks on trade and diplomatic disputes. Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that decision in early December, becoming one of the dozen-plus countries that announced diplomatic boycotts.

Most other countries with diplomatic boycotts are like Australia – with a record of concerns about human rights in China and enough wealth to get past any economic reprisals. The United States announced its diplomatic boycott in December. Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Taiwan and some 10 European countries have followed. Although government officials will not be attending, these nations still let their athletes compete in the Winter Games.

“In Europe, I think it’s very important and here in the United States and in Australia, there are populations that really do care about human rights,” said Scott Harold, a Washington-based senior political scientist with the Rand Corporation research group. “This is not just a stick to beat China or an attempt to contain China’s rise. It’s really in part about living the values that you say guide your polity.”

Six Summer or Winter Olympiads over the event’s more than 100-year history have weathered boycotts.

Officials in Beijing see diplomatic boycotts as an inappropriate mix of sports and politics. They vowed reprisal against the United States in December.

Photo Gallery:

2022 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony

The U.S. diplomatic boycott of its Games “seriously violated the principle of the political neutrality of sports established by the Olympic Charter and that the U.S. will pay a price for it,” state-run China Daily reported.

China has denied accusations of human rights abuses and described the reasons for some U.S. lawmakers’ call for a diplomatic boycott as “full of lies and false information” that is “based on ideology and political prejudice” according to Chinese state media outlet Xinhua News Agency.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Economic, regional ties

Chinese economic clout stops some governments from boycotting, said James Gomez, regional director of the Asia Centre, a Bangkok-based think tank. Countries throughout the developing world, especially in Asia and Africa, look to China’s $15.6 trillion economy as an irreplaceable market for exports and a source of direct investment.

“China is there, it’s big, so let’s just play nice even if they may not mean it because in the play of diplomacy everybody does the doublespeak,” Gomez said. “So, even if they may be aligned politically in a different way, they will still not publicly distance themselves from China.”

The Philippines, which has its own list of problems with China, decided to send three officials to the Games with its single athlete, alpine skier Asa Miller.

Filipinos had “hardly any public discussion about participating or not” in the Games this month, said Herman Kraft, a political science professor at the University of the Philippines Diliman. Beijing and Manila have sparred with occasional ship standoffs since 2012 for control over the resource-rich South China Sea between them.

“There might be some concern about reprisals, but I think it’s more of a preemptive thing in the sense that they’re not too interested in using the Olympics as a forum or an arena where relations with China might actually be made at risk,” Kraft said.

Other Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia and Vietnam, also vie with China over maritime sovereignty, but Malaysia has praised China for hosting the Olympics. Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc sent a letter to Chinese officials wishing them a successful Winter Olympics, according to Vietnamese state media, Nhân Dân.

A “fear of further sanctions” may explain South Korea’s unwillingness to boycott the Games, the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies said in a Jan. 13 study. China sanctioned South Korea after its deployment of the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system in 2016, the study says, costing tourism alone $15.7 billion.

Beijing kicked off the Olympics on Friday with Chinese President Xi Jinping and International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach appearing at an opening ceremony in the National Stadium.

Trial Begins for Cops Accused of Violating George Floyd's Rights

ST. PAUL, MINN. — 

The federal trial for three former Minneapolis police officers charged with violating George Floyd’s civil rights as Derek Chauvin pinned the Black man’s neck to the street began Monday with opening statements, after a jury of 18 people was swiftly picked last week.

J. Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao are broadly charged with depriving Floyd of his civil rights while acting under government authority. All three are charged for failing to provide Floyd with medical care and Thao and Kueng face an additional count for failing to stop Chauvin, who was convicted of murder and manslaughter in state court last year.

FILE – Former Minneapolis police officers J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao are seen in this combination of photos provided by the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office in Minnesota on June 3, 2020.

Legal experts say prosecutors have to prove Kueng, Lane and Thao willfully violated Floyd’s constitutional rights, while defense attorneys are likely to blame Chauvin for Floyd’s murder, which was videotaped and triggered worldwide protests, violence and a reexamination of racism and policing.

FILE – Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin sits in front of a picture of George Floyd displayed during Chauvin’s trial for second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the death of Floyd in Minneapolis.

Floyd, 46, died on May 25, 2020, after Chauvin pressed him to the ground with his knee on Floyd’s neck for 9 1/2 minutes while Floyd was facedown, handcuffed and gasping for air. Kueng knelt on Floyd’s back and Lane held down his legs. Thao kept bystanders from intervening.

Attorneys for the Floyd family have said bystander video shows that the three officers “directly contributed to [Floyd’s] death and failed to intervene to stop the senseless murder.”

On Thursday, 18 people were chosen for the jury; 12 will deliberate and six will be alternates. Two of the jurors — one expected to deliberate and one alternate — appear to be of Asian descent. The rest appear to be white. The jurors include people from the Twin Cities area, the suburbs and southern Minnesota. The court declined to provide demographic information.

Federal prosecutions of officers involved in on-duty killings are rare. Prosecutors face a high legal standard to show that an officer willfully deprived someone of their constitutional rights. Essentially, prosecutors must prove that the officers knew what they were doing was wrong, but did it anyway.

The indictment charges Thao, who is Hmong American; Lane, who is white; and Kueng, who is Black, with willfully depriving Floyd of the right to be free from an officer’s deliberate indifference to his medical needs. The indictment says the three men saw Floyd clearly needed medical care and failed to aid him.

Thao and Kueng are also charged with a second count alleging they willfully violated Floyd’s right to be free from unreasonable seizure by not stopping Chauvin as he knelt on Floyd’s neck. It’s not clear why Lane is not mentioned in that count, but evidence shows he asked twice whether Floyd should be rolled on his side.

Both counts allege the officers’ actions resulted in Floyd’s death.

U.S. District Judge Magnuson told jurors that the trial could last four weeks. It’s not known whether any of the three officers will testify. It’s also not clear whether Chauvin will testify, though many experts who spoke to The Associated Press believe he won’t.

Lane, Kueng and Thao also face a separate state trial in June on charges they aided and abetted both murder and manslaughter.

Human Rights Watch alerta del aumento de la represión en el mundo en 2021 | Internacional

La creciente represión de toda voz disidente por parte de los regímenes de países como China, Rusia, Nicaragua, El Salvador o Bielorrusia; el giro autoritario en democracias “antes consolidadas” como Brasil, Hungría y Turquía, y las transferencias de poder “no democráticas” en países como Túnez, marcaron 2021, según el informe anual que Human Rigths Watch (HRW) difundió este jueves en la ciudad suiza de Ginebra. Sin embargo, este panorama esconde un “futuro más sombrío” para los autócratas de lo que parece, pues el anhelo popular de democracia sigue siendo “fuerte”, precisa en el prólogo del documento Kennet Roth, director ejecutivo de la organización de derechos humanos.

En el texto, de 764 páginas, se destaca esta “realidad compleja” y la esperanza que alumbra la resistencia de muchos pueblos a la violación de sus derechos humanos, políticos y sociales. El informe recalca cómo los ciudadanos de países como Cuba, Myanmar y Sudán se echaron a la calle el pasado año para protestar contra las autocracias y los golpes de Estado. “En un país tras otro, un gran número de personas ha salido recientemente a la calle, aun a riesgo de ser detenidas o fusiladas”, destaca Roth.

Si HRW alaba en su documento la respuesta de estos pueblos, la actuación de los líderes occidentales le parece mucho más censurable. El informe critica la respuesta de Occidente ante la represión de las dictaduras, que define como “débil”, y lamenta que los países que lideran el concierto mundial no hayan sido capaces de “hacer frente” tampoco a otros desafíos, entre los que cita desde la crisis climática, la pandemia de covid-19 y la falta de acceso a las vacunas de los países menos desarrollados, hasta la pobreza, la desigualdad y la injusticia racial.

A España, HRW le reprocha las devoluciones en caliente de migrantes y solicitantes de asilo, incluido de menores de edad a través de sus fronteras -en concreto, cita el caso de Ceuta-, las muertes de migrantes fundamentalmente en la ruta de las Canarias, la pobreza aumentada por la covid-19, así como la dificultad de ejercer derechos recogidos por la legislación española como el del aborto.

Entre las críticas a países y líderes occidentales del documento, destaca especialmente el juicio negativo al desempeño del presidente de Estados Unidos. La organización recalca que, pese a que Joe Biden asumió el cargo en enero de 2021 con la promesa de situar los derechos humanos en el centro de su política exterior, EE UU “ha seguido vendiendo armas a Egipto, Arabia Saudí, los Emiratos Árabes Unidos e Israel a pesar de su persistente represión”, apuntó Roth, que reprueba también la actuación de dirigentes como el presidente francés Emmanuel Macron y la excanciller alemana Angela Merkel, que “han mostrado una debilidad similar en su defensa de la democracia”.

El informe prosigue relatando cómo en el segundo año de pandemia muchas dictaduras o autocracias siguieron utilizando la situación sanitaria “como pretexto” para amenazar, silenciar o detener a disidentes. Países como Egipto, India, Hungría, México, Nicaragua o Venezuela fueron ejemplos de esta práctica, de acuerdo con HRW, mientras que, en casos como los de Rusia o Cuba, se empleó la excusa de la covid-19 para “acabar con protestas contra el gobierno mientras se permitían otras a su favor”.

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Uno de los ejemplos de esta instrumentalización de la pandemia es -denuncia la ONG- el del Gobierno ultranacionalista húngaro de Viktor Orbán, que mantiene vigente el estado de emergencia desde 2020. Esta medida le permite gobernar por decreto en temas sanitarios e incluso suspender la aplicación de las leyes. La Administración de Orbán mantuvo además en 2021 sus ataques contra las instituciones democráticas, la prensa y la comunidad LTGBI, deja patente el documento.

El informe de la organización, que repasa la situación de los derechos humanos en más de un centenar de países del mundo, constata a su vez el jaque de China a los últimos reductos de libertad en Hong Kong y la imposición de una draconiana Ley de Seguridad Nacional que “acabó completamente con las libertades políticas y permitió solo a “patriotas” aliados de Pekín presentar candidaturas”, subraya en el prólogo Roth. HRW lamenta asimismo el silencio de Naciones Unidas y su negativa a condenar abiertamente a China por sus “crímenes contra la humanidad” contra la minoría musulmana uigur en la región de Xinjiang.

Otro régimen que, según el documento de HRW, es responsable de violaciones de derechos humanos especialmente graves es Venezuela. La ONG acusa al Gobierno de Nicolás Maduro y sus fuerzas de seguridad  “de ejecuciones extrajudiciales, desapariciones por un corto periodo de tiempo, así como del encarcelamiento y torturas de opositores”.

HRW describe, por otra parte, el incremento de los abusos en sistemas electorales ya antes frágiles y destaca los que tuvieron lugar en Rusia, donde el líder opositor Alexei Navalni fue condenado a prisión después de sobrevivir a un intento de envenenamiento, o en Nicaragua, donde todos los candidatos rivales de Daniel Ortega fueron detenidos antes de las elecciones de noviembre.

“La defensa de los derechos humanos requiere no solo combatir la represión de las dictaduras sino también mejorar el liderazgo político en las democracias”, concluye el documento de HRW, una organización fundada en 1978 que asegura financiarse con donaciones privadas y de fundaciones y no aceptar fondos gubernamentales, “ni directa ni indirectamente”.

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Iran, Venezuela and Sudan Lose UN Voting Rights With 5 More

UNITED NATIONS — 

Iran, Venezuela and Sudan are in arrears on paying dues to the United Nations’ operating budget and are among eight nations that will lose their voting rights in the 193-member General Assembly, the U.N. chief said in a letter circulated Wednesday.

Also losing voting rights are Antigua and Barbuda, Republic of Congo, Guinea, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in the letter to General Assembly President Abdulla Shahid.

The suspension takes effect immediately.

The U.N. Charter states that members whose arrears equal or exceed the amount of their contributions for the preceding two full years lose their voting rights. But it also gives the General Assembly the authority to decide “that the failure to pay is due to conditions beyond the control of the member,” and in that case, a country can continue to vote.

The General Assembly decided that three African countries on the list of nations in arrears — Comoros, Sao Tome and Principe, and Somalia — would be able to keep their voting rights.

According to the secretary-general’s letter, the minimum payments needed to restore voting rights are $18,412,438 for Iran, $39,850,761 for Venezuela and $299,044 for Sudan. The five other countries each need less than $75,000 to restore their voting rights.

Iran also lost its voting rights in January 2021. It regained those rights in June after making the minimum payment on its dues and lashed out at the United States for maintaining sanctions that have prevented it from accessing billions of dollars in foreign banks. At that time, U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq thanked banking and government authorities in various places, including South Korea, for enabling the payment to be made.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump reimposed sanctions on Iran after pulling the U.S. out of the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and six major powers in 2018.