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#human_rights

May 27, 2023 11:23am

West Papua rebels threaten to shoot New Zealand pilot if independence talks denied

The Guardian

Phillip Mehrtens, who has been held hostage since February, makes the claim in a new video released by the separatist group.

(Text continues underneath the picture.)

New Zealand pilot Phillip Mehrtens is being held by separatists in Indonesia’s Papua region. Photograph: West Papua Liberation Army/AP.

Rebels in Indonesia’s Papua region have threatened to shoot a New Zealand pilot being held hostage if countries do not comply with their demand to start independence talks within two months, a new video released by the group shows. (...)

A low-level but increasingly deadly battle for independence has been waged in resource-rich Papua ever since it was controversially brought under Indonesian control in a vote overseen by the United Nations in 1969. (...)

Complete article

Tags: #netherlands #papua #west_papua #indonesia #hostage #west-papoea #act_of_free_choice #Free_Papua_Movement #Organisasi_Papua_Merdeka #OPM #human_rights #liberation_movement #morning_star #West_Papua_National_Liberation_Army

Bert Ernste

November 4, 2022 10:12am

A Papuan Human Rights Hero Has Died

Filep Karma Called for Papua Independence from Indonesia; Spent 11 Years in Prison

Human Rights Watch

Filep Karma, a prominent Papuan activist and former political prisoner, was found dead Monday on a beach in the Papuan city of Jayapura. He had been on a diving trip with his brother-in-law and nephew, and apparently went diving alone after his relatives left the trip early. Karma, a master diver with three decades’ experience, was found wearing his scuba diving suit. (...)

In 2010, Human Rights Watch published a report on political prisoners in Papua and the Moluccas Islands, launching a global campaign to release the prisoners. In 2011, Karma’s mother, Eklefina Noriwari, petitioned the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention for Karma’s release. The working group determined Karma’s detention had violated international law, and called on the Indonesian government release him. The authorities only released Karma in 2015.

After his release, Karma embraced a wider agenda of political activism. He spoke about human rights and environmental protection. He campaigned for the rights of minorities. He organized help for political prisoners’ families. (...)

Complete article

Tags: #new_guinea #dutch_new_guinea #papua #west_papua #papua_merdeka #independence #act_of_free_choice #referendum #human_rights #racism #discrimination #indonesia #media #censorship #censor #news #freedom_of_the_press #press_freedom #nederlands_nieuw-guinea #human_rights_abuse

A Papuan Human Rights Hero Has Died

Ian Kenway

July 24, 2022 12:43pm

#opposition #labour #starmer #asylum #rwanda #human_rights #error #democracy #politics #uk #eu #global #future

Bert Ernste

June 25, 2022 3:25pm

I Invented Gilead. The Supreme Court Is Making It Real.

I thought I was writing fiction in The Handmaid’s Tale.

Margaret Atwood (The Atlantic)

(...) Although I eventually completed this novel and called it The Handmaid’s Tale, I stopped writing it several times, because I considered it too far-fetched. Silly me. Theocratic dictatorships do not lie only in the distant past: There are a number of them on the planet today. What is to prevent the United States from becoming one of them?

For instance: It is now the middle of 2022, and we have just been shown a leaked opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States that would overthrow settled law of 50 years on the grounds that abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution, and is not “deeply rooted” in our “history and tradition.” True enough. The Constitution has nothing to say about women’s reproductive health. But the original document does not mention women at all. (...)

Women were nonpersons in U.S. law for a lot longer than they have been persons. If we start overthrowing settled law using Justice Samuel Alito’s justifications, why not repeal votes for women?

Reproductive rights have been the focus of the recent fracas, but only one side of the coin has been visible: the right to abstain from giving birth. The other side of that coin is the power of the state to prevent you from reproducing. The Supreme Court’s 1927 Buck v. Bell decision held that the state may sterilize people without their consent. Although the decision was nullified by subsequent cases, and state laws that permitted large-scale sterilization have been repealed, Buck v. Bell is still on the books. (...)

Thus a “deeply rooted” tradition is that women’s reproductive organs do not belong to the women who possess them. They belong only to the state.

Wait, you say: It’s not about the organs; it’s about the babies. Which raises some questions. Is an acorn an oak tree? Is a hen’s egg a chicken? When does a fertilized human egg become a full human being or person? “Our” traditions—let’s say those of the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the early Christians—have vacillated on this subject. At “conception”? At “heartbeat”? At “quickening?” The hard line of today’s anti-abortion activists is at “conception,” which is now supposed to be the moment at which a cluster of cells becomes “ensouled.” But any such judgment depends on a religious belief—namely, the belief in souls. (...)

It ought to be simple: If you believe in “ensoulment” at conception, you should not get an abortion, because to do so is a sin within your religion. If you do not so believe, you should not—under the Constitution—be bound by the religious beliefs of others. But should the Alito opinion become the newly settled law, the United States looks to be well on the way to establishing a state religion. (...)

The Alito opinion purports to be based on America’s Constitution. But it relies on English jurisprudence from the 17th century, a time when a belief in witchcraft caused the death of many innocent people. (...)

Similarly, it will be very difficult to disprove a false accusation of abortion. The mere fact of a miscarriage, or a claim by a disgruntled former partner, will easily brand you a murderer. Revenge and spite charges will proliferate, as did arraignments for witchcraft 500 years ago.

If Justice Alito wants you to be governed by the laws of the 17th century, you should take a close look at that century. Is that when you want to live?

Complete article

Tags: #abortion #abortion_rights #freedom #dicatatorship #books #atwood #reproduction #womens_rights #constitution #sterilization #forced_sterilization #reproductive_rights #human_rights #religion

I Invented Gilead. The Supreme Court Is Making It Real.

I thought I was writing fiction in "The Handmaid’s Tale."

Ian Kenway

December 19, 2021 10:59pm

#daniel #belshazzar #feast #judgment #tories #politics #crime #human_rights #UK #global

Bert Ernste

November 8, 2021 11:38am

Dark things are happening on Europe’s borders. Are they a sign of worse to come?

The Guardian

With a disregard for people’s lives, countries from the UK to Poland are toughening up, as if in preparation for climate displacement.

It is bad enough when states break their own rules and mistreat people – but it’s when they start to change the rules that we really need to worry. Three recent stories, from three different corners of Europe, suggest that governments are crossing a new threshold of violence in terms of how they police their borders. (...)

In the UK, the Home Office has quietly tried to amend its draconian nationality and borders bill, currently at committee stage, by introducing a provision that gives Border Force staff immunity from prosecution if they fail to save lives at sea. (...)

In Poland, the government has just passed an emergency law allowing authorities to turn back refugees who cross into the country “illegally”. It is the latest development in a diplomatic standoff with Belarus. (...) Poland’s hardline response leaves many people trapped in the no man’s land between the two countries. (...)

In south-eastern Europe, an international team of investigative journalists have revealed that Croatia and Greece are using a “shadow army”, balaclava-clad plainclothes units linked to those countries’ regular security forces, to force people back from their borders. (...) Just as shocking as the claims themselves is the fact that the revelations have largely been met with a shrug of indifference by EU officials, whose funding helps prop up border defences in both countries. (...)

Together, these stories suggest that the “push-back” – the forcing away of migrating people from a country’s territory, even if it places them in harm’s way or overrides their right to asylum – is becoming an entrenched practice. Once something that would take place largely in the shadows, it is being done increasingly openly, with some governments trying to find ways to make the practice legal. (...)

This is not only a problem for today: it is a dress rehearsal for how our governments are likely to deal with the effects of the climate crisis in years to come. (...) [A] new report by the World Bank projects that 216 million people could be displaced within their own countries by water shortages, crop failure and rising sea levels by 2050. (...)

Unfortunately, many of our politicians are primed to see displacement first and foremost as a civilisational threat. (...)

Richer parts of the world have already begun to militarise their borders, a process that has accelerated in response to the refugee movements of the past decade. (...)

This, however, is a false kind of security. Restrictive and violent border control just makes the societies that wield it more authoritarian – and it doesn’t stop people moving entirely, either. What it does is force people to make more dangerous journeys, becoming even greater targets for xenophobic backlash. (...)

What’s required, instead – beyond action to reduce emissions – is a plan to help people adapt to changing living circumstances and reduce global inequality, along with migration policies that recognise the reality of people’s situations. (...)

The next few years are likely to mark a turning point in the way our governments respond to displacement. Either they work together to build a system that protects people’s lives and dignity, and that can adapt to the changing realities of the 21st century, or their borders will continue to harden, at considerable human cost. If we want to avoid the latter, then now is the time to challenge the violent logic of the push-back, before it becomes written into our laws.

Full article

> See also: Europe’s Deadly Border Policies (Human Rights Watch)

‘In Poland, the government has passed an emergency law allowing authorities to turn back refugees who cross into the country “illegally”.’Border guards are seen guarding Afghan refugees at the Polish and Belarusian border, August 2021. Photograph: Attila Husejnow/SOPA Images/Rex/Shutterstock.

Tags: #europe #borders #border_policy #fort_europe #pushbacks #frontex #libya #mediterranean #human_rights #migrantion #migrants #refugees #coast_guard #border_police #poland #belarus #greece #uk #united_kingdom #croatia #eu #european_union

Bert Ernste

September 19, 2021 7:49am

‘Killed like animals’: documents reveal how Australia turned a blind eye to a West Papuan massacre

The Guardian

Dozens of West Papuans were tortured and thrown into the sea 23 years ago. Days later, Australia knew details of the attack, yet remained silent. (...)

Women and children were cut down before his eyes. Some were singing hymns as the troops opened fire.

Bullets tore through the neck and stomach of two of his friends.

“They were killing like they killed animals,” he says. “They don’t think these are human beings, they are thinking these are animals.”

Korwa’s skull was cracked from the butt of an Indonesian soldier’s rifle and his stomach was bleeding heavily from a machete wound. (...)

In the 23 years since, not one person has been charged with the killings. The massacre is not recognised officially and no government or international inquiry has reported on it.

The Indonesian government has either denied or downplayed the deaths. (...)

Australia has only ever offered a muted response, expressing concern to the Indonesian government but not condemning the massacre.

The true extent of the Howard government’s knowledge of the massacre has, until now, largely remained unknown.

But a newly released, unredacted intelligence report handed to Guardian Australia reveals an Australian intelligence officer provided the government with compelling evidence just 11 days after the killings that Indonesia “almost certainly used excessive force against pro-independence demonstrators”.

The same officer was also handed photographic evidence by West Papuans on Biak, at great risk to their safety. The photos were distributed to his superiors within defence, but never saw the light of day.

New evidence suggests they have since been destroyed by the defence department, despite consistent calls for a proper investigation into the atrocity. (...)

Full article

> More on West Papua (formerly Netherlands New Guinea)

Yudha Korwa fled West Papua and came to Australia in 2006 after a massacre by the Indonesian military. Photograph: Christopher Hopkins/The Guardian.

Bert Ernste

September 10, 2021 8:58am

9/11 Unleashed a Global Storm of Human Rights Abuses

Human Rights Watch

(...) The September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States were foremost a tragedy for the nearly 3,000 victims and their families. (...)

Compounding this tragedy, the horror of the attacks spawned an abusive reaction that reverberates to this day. Instead of reaffirming the human rights standards that prohibit such instrumental cruelty, the administration of President George W. Bush shredded them. The American people, appalled and frightened by the magnitude of the attacks, didn’t adequately push back. Often, because so much was done in secret, they didn’t even know, at least until much later. (...)

The brutal mistreatment of suspects, such as by waterboarding, was papered over with the euphemism “enhanced interrogation techniques.” (...)

The effect of this indifference to human rights sparked emulation elsewhere. Brutal rulers figured out that the best way to get away with mass abuse was to label it a fight against “terrorism.” The Chinese government uses that line to justify detaining 1 million Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang until they abandon Islam, their culture, and their language. Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt have each detained tens of thousands of people under that rationale despite, typically, an utter lack of evidence. The Israeli government uses it to justify the 14-year-long closure and periodic bombing of the people of Gaza.

Beyond the abuses themselves, was the conceptual damage. Rather than using law enforcement means to address the horrible crimes of September 11, the Bush administration declared a “global war on terror” that extended to every corner of the earth, far beyond the borders of Afghanistan, where the Al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, was believed to be hiding. That purportedly allowed detaining suspects found anywhere as “enemy combatants” without charge or trial until the “war” ended, meaning, potentially, forever. That laid the groundwork for indefinite detentions at Guantanamo Bay.

The “war” paradigm was also used to justify killing suspects wherever they were found, often on the flimsiest of evidence. (...)

A more enlightened approach to countering terrorism would have enlisted Muslim communities. Most Muslims in the United States were appalled by the perversion of Islam that Al-Qaeda used to justify the September 11 and other attacks. Globally, Muslims are the primary victims of terrorism. Yet from the Bush to the Barack Obama and Donald Trump administrations, Muslims as a whole were treated with varying degrees of suspicion, subjected to police surveillance, profiled for interrogation, targeted for entrapment, locked up as “material witnesses.” (...)

The US government’s quest to maintain impunity for torture is also the main reason why none of the five alleged planners of the September 11 attacks has been tried. (...) But the US government wanted to dispense with due-process protections and avoid its torture becoming public, and to use as much as possible the fruits of that torture. So rather than send the September 11 suspects to a traditional court, it devised special “military commissions”, a “justice” system concocted from scratch, stacked against the defense, and fundamentally unfair. (...)

It is a time to condemn the evil of terrorism. It is also the time to close Guantanamo, by releasing all of the 39 aging detainees still there, who have not been charged, and giving the rest a fair trial in a proper court. It is time, as much as still possible, to prosecute those who ordered the secret detention and torture, and to release the full Senate Intelligence Committee report on this despicable program. And it is time formally to end the “global war on terror”, to admit that, in the absence of a genuine armed conflict, terrorism offenses can be fought like any other serious crime within the confines of international human rights law, without the endless detention and summary killings that have plagued this forever “war.”

Full article

> See also: Twenty Years On: The Legacy of 9/11 (Human Rights Watch)

A man stands in the rubble after the collapse of the first World Trade Center Tower in New York City on September 11, 2001.
© 2001 DOUG KANTER/AFP via Getty Images.