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Category: Human rights/civil liberties

Tunisia arrests opposition leader as crackdown escalates

Tunisia arrests opposition leader as crackdown escalates

The Washington Post reports: Tunisian security forces arrested the leader of the main opposition party Monday night and shuttered its headquarters, escalating a crackdown on the president’s critics in this formerly authoritarian North African country, which is veering again toward one-man rule. About 100 plainclothes police officers raided the home of Rachid Ghannouchi, the 81-year-old head of the moderate Islamist Ennahda party, on Monday evening, as he was sitting down with family to break the Ramadan fast, his daughter Yusra…

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Russia sentences Kara-Murza, Putin critic and Washington Post contributor, to 25 years

Russia sentences Kara-Murza, Putin critic and Washington Post contributor, to 25 years

The Washington Post reports: A Russian court sentenced Vladimir Kara-Murza, a longtime opposition politician and Washington Post Opinions contributor, to 25 years in prison Monday on charges of treason for criticizing Russia’s war against Ukraine. Amid a draconian crackdown on dissent, it was the harshest penalty yet for an opponent of the war, in a case that Kara-Murza condemned as “unfounded, illegal and politically motivated.” The closed trial further highlighted Russia’s isolationist path, as President Vladimir Putin has disregarded Western…

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How Portland police blanketed parts of the city with toxic chemicals

How Portland police blanketed parts of the city with toxic chemicals

The Guardian reports: Investigators have created a 3D simulation of the Portland police bureau’s (PPB) extraordinary use of teargas during a major protest event on 2 June 2020. Forensic Architecture (FA), a research agency that investigates human rights violations, worked with weapons experts to analyze hundreds of videos from that evening, along with internal police files, invoice records, manufacturer data and photos of teargas canisters. The analysis reveals that the city’s downtown was blanketed with gas at more than 50 times the level federal regulators…

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Alexei Navalny in ‘critical’ situation after possible poisoning, says ally

Alexei Navalny in ‘critical’ situation after possible poisoning, says ally

The Guardian reports: Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition politician, has been grappling with severe stomach pain in jail that could be the result of slow-acting poison, a close ally said on Friday. Ruslan Shaveddinov said an ambulance was called last week to the maximum security IK-6 penal colony at Melekhovo, about 155 miles (250km) east of Moscow, where he is being held. “His situation is critical, we are all very concerned,” Shaveddinov told the Guardian in a phone interview….

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China sentences leading human rights activists to 14 and 12 years in prison

China sentences leading human rights activists to 14 and 12 years in prison

The New York Times reports: Two of China’s most prominent human rights lawyers were sentenced on Monday to 14 years and 12 years in prison, some of the lengthiest such sentences in recent years and an indication of how the space for expression has evaporated under China’s leader, Xi Jinping. The lawyers, Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi, had been charged with subversion for promoting what they called a “New Citizens Movement,” which encouraged ordinary Chinese to exercise the rights such…

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The hideous resurrection of the Comstock Act

The hideous resurrection of the Comstock Act

Michelle Goldberg writes: Anthony Comstock, the mutton-chopped anti-vice crusader for whom the Comstock Act is named, is back from the dead. Comstock died in 1915, and the Comstock Act, the notorious anti-obscenity law used to indict the Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, ban books by D.H. Lawrence and arrest people by the thousands, turned 150 last month. Had this anniversary fallen five or 10 years ago, it barely would have been worth noting, except perhaps to marvel at how far…

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She posted a question about the war in Ukraine on Instagram. Then she faced a prison term

She posted a question about the war in Ukraine on Instagram. Then she faced a prison term

The New York Times reports: Sitting in a small courtroom flanked by her two lawyers last month, Olesya Krivtsova was facing a stiff penalty for her fondness for posting on social media. Barely 20 and until this year a university student in northern Russia, she was accused of “justifying terrorism” and “discrediting the Russian armed forces,” and was facing up to a decade in prison. Her apparent crime? An Instagram post asking why Ukrainians had rejoiced when the main bridge…

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America is in a disgraced class of its own

America is in a disgraced class of its own

Matthew Desmond writes: The United States has a poverty problem. A third of the country’s people live in households making less than $55,000. Many are not officially counted among the poor, but there is plenty of economic hardship above the poverty line. And plenty far below it as well. According to the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which accounts for government aid and living expenses, more than one in 25 people in America 65 or older lived in deep poverty in 2021,…

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Global freedom has declined for the 17th consecutive year

Global freedom has declined for the 17th consecutive year

The 2023 edition of Freedom in the World from Freedom House reports: The global struggle for democracy approached a possible turning point in 2022. The gap between the number of countries that registered overall improvements in political rights and civil liberties and those that registered overall declines was the narrowest it has ever been through 17 consecutive years of deterioration. The most serious setbacks for freedom and democracy were the result of war, coups, and attacks on democratic institutions by…

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Is the poisoning of schoolgirls in Iran a new front in the war against girls’ education?

Is the poisoning of schoolgirls in Iran a new front in the war against girls’ education?

Shutterstock By Shireen Daft, Macquarie University Recent media attention has drawn global focus on an escalating number of Iranian schoolgirls falling ill over the past few months because of suspected chemical attacks. Accounts differ, but many reports cite more than 1,000 cases of poisoning at schools across Iran. At least 58 schools in ten provinces across the country have been affected. The first known cases were reported in the city of Qom in November. There has been an escalation of…

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Tunisia’s president embraces the racist ‘great replacement theory’

Tunisia’s president embraces the racist ‘great replacement theory’

Erin Clare Brown reports: After a fortnight of political arrests and detentions, Tunisia’s president, Kais Saied, has now unleashed a racist campaign targeting Black migrants in his country, with conspiracies that echo the “great replacement theory” and police raids in popular quarters across the country where many migrant workers live. In an address to his National Security Council on February 21, Saied claimed that “there is a criminal arrangement that has been prepared since the beginning of this century to…

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‘Senseless invasion’: UN human rights session begins with scathing criticism of Russia over Ukraine war

‘Senseless invasion’: UN human rights session begins with scathing criticism of Russia over Ukraine war

RFE/RL reports: The United Nations Human Rights Council has kicked off a new session in Geneva with sharp criticism of Russia for its full-scale invasion on Ukraine. Speaking on February 27 at the opening of the session, which runs until April 4, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said nearly 100 million people were forced to flee conflict last year, a record number, and that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights “is under assault from all sides.” “The Russian invasion of Ukraine…

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Iranian women defiantly assert, ‘the era of the forced hijab is over’

Iranian women defiantly assert, ‘the era of the forced hijab is over’

The New York Times reports: An engineer strode onstage at an event in Tehran, wearing tight pants and a stylish shirt, and clutching a microphone in one hand. Her long brown hair, tied in a ponytail, swung freely behind her, uncovered, in open defiance of Iran’s strict hijab law. “I am Zeinab Kazempour,” she told the convention of Iran’s professional association of engineers. She condemned the group for supporting the hijab rules, and then she marched offstage, removing a scarf…

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Feminism taught me all I need to know about men like Trump and Putin

Feminism taught me all I need to know about men like Trump and Putin

Rebecca Solnit writes: As the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfolded, I was reminded over and over again of the behaviour of abusive ex-husbands and boyfriends. At first he thinks that he can simply bully her into returning. When it turns out she has no desire to return, he shifts to vengeance. Putin insisted that Ukraine was rightfully part of Russia and didn’t have a separate existence. He expected his army to grab and subjugate with ease, even be welcomed. Now…

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Alone and exploited, migrant children work brutal jobs across the U.S.

Alone and exploited, migrant children work brutal jobs across the U.S.

The New York Times reports: It was almost midnight in Grand Rapids, Mich., but inside the factory everything was bright. A conveyor belt carried bags of Cheerios past a cluster of young workers. One was 15-year-old Carolina Yoc, who came to the United States on her own last year to live with a relative she had never met. About every 10 seconds, she stuffed a sealed plastic bag of cereal into a passing yellow carton. It could be dangerous work,…

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‘Equality of injustice for all’: Saudi Arabia expands crackdown on dissent

‘Equality of injustice for all’: Saudi Arabia expands crackdown on dissent

The New York Times reports: One day in November 2015, Saad Almadi typed out a 14-word post on Twitter about Saudi Arabia’s deputy crown prince. “Mohammed bin Salman has taken over the economy, defense and everything under the king,” he wrote, replying to a professor who is a fierce critic of the kingdom’s monarchy. A Saudi-American dual citizen living in Florida, Mr. Almadi had little reason to believe his post would attract attention. He was a retired project manager, not…

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