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Category: Human rights/civil liberties

China’s high-tech surveillance drives oppression of Uyghurs

China’s high-tech surveillance drives oppression of Uyghurs

Steven Feldstein writes: On August 31, 2022, in the final hours of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet’s term, after months of delays and postponements, her department released a comprehensive report detailing China’s oppression in Xinjiang Province. The circumstances of China’s repression are well documented. Academics and human rights organizations estimate that 10 to 20 percent (with an upper limit calculated at 1.8 million) of adult Uyghurs in Xinjiang have been subjected to detention by Chinese authorities. Officials…

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Students defy Iran protest ultimatum, unrest enters more dangerous phase

Students defy Iran protest ultimatum, unrest enters more dangerous phase

Reuters reports: Weeks of protest in Iran entered a more violent phase on Sunday as students defied an ultimatum by the Revolutionary Guards and were met with tear gas, beatings and gunfire from riot police and militia, social media videos showed. The confrontations at dozens of universities prompted a threat of a tougher crackdown in the seventh week of demonstrations since 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died after she was arrested by the morality police for attire deemed inappropriate. Iranians from all…

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Resisting Israeli efforts to displace them, Palestinians move into caves

Resisting Israeli efforts to displace them, Palestinians move into caves

The New York Times reports: Faced with expulsion from their villages and the demolition of their homes by Israeli authorities, hundreds of Palestinians are trying to stay by reverting to an older form of shelter: living in underground caves. “We have no home to live in and no tent — we have no option but to live in the cave,” said Wadha Ayoub Abu Sabha, 65, a resident of the village of Khirbet al-Fakheit, in a rural area of the…

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Forced transfer of children from Ukraine to Russia may be a war crime and an act of genocide

Forced transfer of children from Ukraine to Russia may be a war crime and an act of genocide

The New York Times reports: As Russian forces laid siege to the Ukrainian city of Mariupol this spring, children fled bombed-out group homes and boarding schools. Separated from their families, they followed neighbors or strangers heading west, seeking the relative safety of central Ukraine. Instead, at checkpoints around the city, pro-Russia forces intercepted them, according to interviews with the children, witnesses and family members. The authorities put them on buses headed deeper into Russian-held territory. “I didn’t want to go,”…

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In the shadow of war, Kremlin continues terrorizing Crimean Tatars

In the shadow of war, Kremlin continues terrorizing Crimean Tatars

The Kyiv Independent reports: They usually come at four or five in the morning. Men in uniform and with guns pull up in large vehicles. The dogs start barking. The family wakes up, knowing exactly what is about to happen. The house is searched. Phones and computers are taken away. And so is the father, or a brother, or another male relative, who is almost always suspected of terrorism – a charge they deny. This is a typical scene in…

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After Ukraine, Biden administration turns to Musk’s satellite internet for Iran

After Ukraine, Biden administration turns to Musk’s satellite internet for Iran

CNN reports: The White House has engaged in talks with Elon Musk about the possibility of setting up SpaceX’s satellite internet service Starlink inside Iran, multiple officials familiar with the discussions told CNN. The conversations, which have not been previously reported, come as the Biden administration searches for ways to support the Iranian protest movement that exploded just over a month ago after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died under suspicious circumstances after being detained by the country’s morality police. The White…

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Daniel Smith, one of the last children of enslaved Americans, dies at 90

Daniel Smith, one of the last children of enslaved Americans, dies at 90

The Washington Post reports: Growing up in the 1930s, Daniel R. Smith would listen to stories from his father, as young boys often do. He was not supposed to hear these stories — they were meant for his older siblings, not for a child as young as 5 or 6 — but after dinner on Saturday evenings he would sneak out of bed and listen to accounts of the “whipping and crying post,” of the lynching tree and the wagon…

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Russia ramps up deportations, as Putin imposes martial law in illegally annexed regions of Ukraine

Russia ramps up deportations, as Putin imposes martial law in illegally annexed regions of Ukraine

Politico reports: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday imposed martial law in the four regions of Ukraine illegally annexed by the Kremlin’s forces, against the backdrop of mass deportations of Ukrainians to Russia and as Moscow lays the ground for further losses of territory. Kremlin-backed authorities in the Ukrainian city of Kherson are planning to “relocate” about 50,000 to 60,000 people to Russian territory, the Moscow-installed regional governor Vladimir Saldo said in a television interview Tuesday. Ivan Fedorov, the Ukrainian…

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Saudi Arabia sentences U.S. citizen to 16 years in prison for tweets

Saudi Arabia sentences U.S. citizen to 16 years in prison for tweets

Josh Rogin writes: The Saudi government has sentenced a 72-year-old U.S. citizen to 16 years in prison for tweets he posted while inside the United States, some of which were critical of the Saudi regime. His son, speaking publicly for the first time, alleges that the Saudi government has tortured his father in prison and says that the State Department mishandled the case. Many dictatorships unjustly imprison Americans. But while the Biden administration has gone to considerable effort to secure…

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‘It was a massacre’: How security forces cracked down on protesting worshipers in southeastern Iran

‘It was a massacre’: How security forces cracked down on protesting worshipers in southeastern Iran

The New York Times reports: Some of the wounded tried to crawl away to escape the gunfire. Others bled to death on prayer mats as people tried to drag them to safety. But the snipers and officers kept pulling their triggers, firing bullet after bullet into men and young boys at a worship area where Friday Prayer had been underway. The horrific scene unfolded on Sept. 30 in Zahedan, a city in southeastern Iran that is home to the ethnic…

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How Moscow abducts Ukrainian children and forces them to become Russian

How Moscow abducts Ukrainian children and forces them to become Russian

The Associated Press reports: Olga Lopatkina paced around her basement in circles like a trapped animal. For more than a week, the Ukrainian mother had heard nothing from her six adopted children stranded in Mariupol, and she was going out of her mind with worry. The kids had spent their vacation at a resort in the port city, as usual. But this time war with Russia had broken out, and her little ones — always terrified of the dark —…

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Protests in Iran spread, including to oil sector, despite regime’s violent crackdown

Protests in Iran spread, including to oil sector, despite regime’s violent crackdown

The New York Times reports: Defying a lethal crackdown in cities across Iran, protesters demanding the ouster of Iran’s Islamic Republic have driven their uprising into a fourth week, with workers from the country’s vital oil sector going on strike this week and activists calling for further work stoppages and protests on Wednesday. Despite efforts by Iran’s security forces, including the feared plainclothes Basij militias, to crush the protests, they have only widened. Some have turned into chaotic street battles,…

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The #WomanLifeFreedom uprising has brought Iran to a turning point

The #WomanLifeFreedom uprising has brought Iran to a turning point

Robin Wright writes: The girls and women of Iran are just bitchin’ brave, flipping the bird at its Supreme Leader in a challenge to one of the most significant revolutions in modern history. Day after dangerous day, on open streets and in gated schools, in a flood of tweets and brazen videos, they have ridiculed a theocracy that deems itself the government of God. The average age of the protesters who have been arrested is just fifteen, the Revolutionary Guard’s…

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In Russian-occupied Izyum, she was raped and tortured

In Russian-occupied Izyum, she was raped and tortured

The Washington Post reports: Soon after Russian forces took her prisoner, the 52-year-old woman picked up a nail and carved her name into a brick wall. A-L-L-A, she wrote. Below, she scratched how many days she had been held in the shed outside a medical clinic in her hometown. Above, she wrote in simple words what she had endured in captivity: ELECTRICAL SHOCK. UNDRESS. PAINFUL. She hoped the markings would one day serve as clues for her son about what…

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‘It’s like a war out there.’ Iran’s women haven’t been this angry in a generation

‘It’s like a war out there.’ Iran’s women haven’t been this angry in a generation

Azadeh Moaveni writes: On Monday, the 18th day of Iran’s intense protests against oppressive clerical rule and its numerous failures, schoolgirls with backpacks and black Converse sneakers joined the revolt. They marched down a street in a suburb of Tehran, the capital, waving their school uniform veils in the air. They jeered a male education official off school grounds in the same suburb, chanting the Persian word for lacking honor: “Bisharaf! Bisharaf!” They blocked traffic in the southern city of…

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Woman, Life, Liberty: A slogan one hundred years in the making

Woman, Life, Liberty: A slogan one hundred years in the making

Nahid Siamdoust writes: Of all the videos to surface from the Iran protests following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini on Sept. 16th, one in particular has caught the public imagination. In this short clip, we see a large gathering of people around a bonfire when a young woman dressed all in white enters the circle energetically, whirls toward the fire almost joyously and halts in a dramatic pose before throwing her headscarf to the flames. The crowd cheers ecstatically….

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