Human Rights

Guantanamo Bay: ‘Ugly Chapter Of Unrelenting Human Rights Violations’

January 12, 2022 the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Educate! Guantanamo Bay, Human Rights, Prisoner rights, Torture

Geneva - On the 20th anniversary of the arrival of the first detainees at Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba, UN experts* condemned the facility as a site of “unparalleled notoriety” and said its continued operation was a stain on the US Government’s commitment to the rule of law. “Twenty years of practising arbitrary detention without trial accompanied by torture or ill treatment is simply unacceptable for any government, particularly a government which has a stated claim to protecting human rights,” said the independent experts, appointed by the Human Rights Council. “As a newly elected Member of the Human Rights Council, the experts again call on the United States to close this facility and close this ugly chapter of unrelenting human rights violations.”

The Highest Attainable Standard Of Health Is A Fundamental Right

January 7, 2022 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! COVID-19, Health Care, Human Rights

As we enter the new year almost two years after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020, the official death toll from COVID-19 sits just below 5.5 million people. WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says that there is a ‘tsunami of cases’ due to the new variants. The country with the highest death toll is the United States, where the official number of those who succumbed to the disease is now over 847,000; Brazil and India follow with nearly 620,000 and 482,000 deaths respectively. These three countries have been ravaged by the disease. The political leadership of each of these countries failed to take sufficient measures to break the chain of infection and instead offered anti-scientific advice to the public, who suffered from both a lack of clear information and relatively depleted health care systems.

Why US Prisons Don’t Want Prisoners To Read

January 5, 2022 Eddie Conway, The Real News Network. Resistance Report Censorship, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights, Prisoner rights

In a recent piece for Protean magazine entitled “The American Prison System’s War on Reading,” Alex Skopic writes, “Across the United States, the agencies responsible for mass imprisonment are trying to severely limit incarcerated people’s access to the written word—an alarming trend, and one that bears closer examination.” From outright banning books and letting prison libraries fall into decay to the intrusion of for-profit electronic reading services that inmates have to pay for, the assault on prisoners’ ability to read books while incarcerated is one of many calculated cruelties that make the US carceral system so inhumane. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, TRNN Executive Producer Eddie Conway speaks with Skopic about the American prison system’s war on reading and its deep (and racist) historical roots.

Forced Displacements In Colombia Increase By Over 169% During 2021

December 29, 2021 Tanya Wadhwa, People's Dispatch. Educate! Colombia, Displacement, Human Rights, Violence

The Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES), on December 22, warned of an alarming increase in massive and multiple forced displacement events in Colombia during 2021. The CODHES reported that between January and November, 2021, 82,846 people were forcibly displaced from their homes and territories, a figure that represents an increase of 169.3% as compared to the same period in 2020. The CODHES further reported that a total number of 167 displacement events were recorded in these eleven months, which represents an increase of 65.3% in relation to the same period in 2020. CODHES also reported that this year’s increase in displacement incidents had been marked by an increase in displacement of Afro-descendant and Indigenous communities.

First ‘Summit For Democracy’ Should Be The Last

December 17, 2021 Branko Milanovic, Consortium News. Educate! Democracy, Human Rights, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

More than 100 nations’ presidents, prime ministers, and kings met virtually at the Summit for Democracy on Dec. 9 and 10. It was the first meeting in history on this scale where the application — or ostensible application — of the democratic principle in the governance of national affairs was used as a criterion to invite participants to an international meeting. There are three ways to look at the summit. A naïve view is to consider it as a meeting of like-minded states, interested in learning from each other about how to improve the application of democratic principles at home. (For that, however, there are already many other venues.) More realistic is to see it as an attempt to create a loose association of states, which would promote abroad their model of governance, assuming it is the only one compatible with the aspirations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Despite Appeals, US Denies Possibility Of Unfreezing Afghan Assets

December 15, 2021 People's Dispatch. Educate! Afghanistan, Human Rights, Taliban, US Sanctions

US White House press secretary Jen Psaki clarified on Tuesday, December 14 said that the government has no plan to unfreeze Afghanistan’s assets. Psaki was responding to a public call by Afghanistan’s foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi made a day earlier to unfreeze the assets. The US government had announced a freeze of nearly USD 10 billion worth of Afghanistan’s assets days after the Taliban took over power in the country on August 15, claiming the possibility of misuse of the funds. It also severed all diplomatic relations with Afghanistan after the complete withdrawal of its troops on August 30. The Taliban government in Afghanistan, the UN, and several other governments, including China, have demanded that the US release the funds to facilitate necessary public expenditure in Afghanistan.

Honduras’ Left-Wing Breakthrough

December 13, 2021 Francisco Dominguez, Tribune Magazine. Educate! Elections, Honduras, Human Rights, US Imperialism

What appeared impossible has been achieved: the people of Honduras have broken the perpetuation, through electoral fraud and thuggish violence, of a brutal, illegal, illegitimate, and criminal regime. By means of sheer resistance, resilience, mobilization, and organization, they have managed to defeat Juan Orlando Hernandez’s narco-dictatorship at the ballot box. Xiomara Castro, presidential candidate of the left-wing Libre party (the Freedom and Refoundation Party, in its Spanish acronym), obtained a splendid 50+ percent—between 15 to 20 percent more votes than her closest rival candidate, Nasry Asfura, National Party candidate, in an election with historic high levels of participation (68 percent).

How Can They Accept Extradition To A Country That Plotted To Kill Julian?

December 10, 2021 WSWS. Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Extradition, Human Rights, Julian Assange

I want to emphasize that the High Court accepted all the medical evidence and the conclusions of the magistrate that if Julian is extradited and placed under extreme conditions of isolation it will drive him to take his own life. That extradition is oppressive. Yet the High Court decided against Julian on this occasion on the basis of political assurances—non-assurances—that the US has given to the UK government. I say non-assurances. Amnesty International says non-assurances. Amnesty International has analyzed these assurances and has said that they are inherently unreliable. They incorporate the possibility of breaking those assurances in their very wording. Today, it’s been almost a year since I stood outside court with our victory of the blocking of the extradition.

People Centered Human Rights And The Black Radical Tradition

December 9, 2021 Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report. Strategize! Human Rights

International Human Rights Day is December 10. On that day in 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was promulgated as the first in a series of covenants, treaties, and legal interpretations that would make up the post-war human rights framework. However, the history of struggle that produced the UDHR, beginning with the 1945 convention in San Francisco that created the United Nations, is one that can only be characterized as contentious. It is not possible to cover all of that history here. However, it is important that the historiography of Black activism that saw Black activists as central players in UN processes and debates between 1945 and 1951 is well known . Suffice to say that the contentious ideological character around the concept of human rights is still being played out today.

A New Campaign Fights To Stop The Criminalization Of Poverty

December 9, 2021 Eleanor J. Bader, The Progressive Magazine. Organize! Homelessness, Housing, Human Rights

Anew campaign, Housing Not Handcuffs, is attempting to stop the criminalization of homelessness and poverty in the United States. Led by the National Homelessness Law Center, the effort builds on research the Law Center has been conducting since 2006. The Law Center’s latest report, issued in late November, tracks laws in all fifty states—plus Washington, D.C.—that make it a criminal offense to sleep, lie down, ask for money, loiter, erect a tent, put down a bedroll, “loaf,” or feed unhoused people in public.

A TERF-Far Right Alliance Has Launched A New Transphobic Onslaught

December 9, 2021 Adrien Belarc, Left Voice. Educate! Human Rights, Transgender Rights, Transgender Women, White Supremacy

Modern-day transphobia, embodied by the Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF) movement, emerged across the English Channel. Until now, it has been mostly anecdotal in France, but the rhetorical apparatus they have constructed is beginning to pick up in France by relying on the reactionary situation that France is experiencing. This is a short guide to survival in a transphobic environment.

Black Alliance For Peace Condemns Trial Of Black Activist Dedan Waciuri

December 6, 2021 Black Alliance for Peace. Resist! Human Rights, North Carolina, Police abuse, Rebellion2020, State Repression

North Carolina - After a number of delays and questionable prosecutorial behavior in their attempts to force a plea-deal because of the weakness of their case, Dedan Waciuri, a resident of Greenville, North Carolina is scheduled to be tried December 7th in the city of Greenville on two charges: “damage to government property” and “inciting a riot.” These charges stem from a protest organized in Greenville on May 31, 2020, in relation to the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and police violence directed at members of the Black community in general. The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), a national anti-war and human rights organization believes that the charges against Dedan, a member of BAP’s Coordinating Committee, are a blatant attempt to send a message to the Black communities in Eastern North Carolina that resistance to oppression and the fight for human rights will result in confronting the full weight of the power of the state.

An Obscure Agency Is Threatening To Hand Medicare Over To Wall Street

December 4, 2021 Ana Malinow, Truthout. Educate! Health Care, Human Rights, Medicare for all, Privatization

In the face of massive support for Medicare for All and the failure of the U.S.’s for-profit health care system, the inevitable fall of the medical-industrial complex can be predicted, if not with precision, with certainty. Everyone is aware of the impending demise, none more so than those in charge of the for-profit health care system and their supporters in Congress, as evidenced by the frenetic activity at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to transfer the traditional Medicare program to the insurance industry as fast as humanly possible. Given this urgency, physicians representing Physicians for a National Health Program delivered a petition signed by 13,000 individuals, including 1,500 physicians, to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra this week demanding the end to the privatization of Medicare.

Some European Prisons Are Based On Dignity Instead Of Dehumanization

December 2, 2021 Ram Subramanian, Brennan Center. Create! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Europe, Human Rights, Rehabilitation

On a cold morning in February 2013, I led a group of American policymakers and criminal justice practitioners — judges, public defenders, legislators, corrections officials, law professors — on a visit to a juvenile prison in eastern Germany. We met with a group of young men, largely between the ages 18 and 21, who were serving between two to five years at the facility; most had been convicted of a violent offense. Although these young men certainly looked like teenagers or very young adults — dressed in jeans, cargo pants, colorful T-shirts, sweatshirts, and baseball caps — they would certainly not be considered “juveniles” in the American system of punishment, which generally caps the upper age of juvenile status at 17.

Another Year Of Devastating Overdoses In Baltimore

December 2, 2021 Brandon Soderberg, The Real News. Create! Harm Reduction, Health Care, Human Rights, Opioid crisis

Last year, I hid behind an abandoned building in East Baltimore with three guys who all used heroin together as they tested their drugs, injected them, and made sure they were there for each other in case any of them overdosed. It was about 8AM in the middle of January 2020, sunny but cold, and “D”—Black, in his late thirties, without a home, and requesting anonymity for obvious reasons—held court behind a vacant rowhouse. D saw to it that he and his friends were as safe as possible—he’s more fastidious and more experienced than the others. Heroin had been part of his life for about 20 years. “I’ve been using off and on,” D explained to me. “Mostly on.” Most mornings back then, D and his friends looked out for one another because they understood that they were most likely to overdose when they used alone.

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