By Huiyu Yin
This year, the National
People’s Congress (NPC) will meet in Beijing on March 2. Under China’s
Constitution, the NPC is the “supreme organ of state power” and “supervises the
enforcement of the Constitution” (art.62).
Showing posts with label Human Rights Watch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Human Rights Watch. Show all posts
By Huiyu Yin
Thousands of
Arabs in “security zones” in areas of northern Iraq have been confined by Iraqi
Kurdish forces since August 2014, when they were captured from ISIS. Local Kurds
told Human Rights Watch that dozens of Arab homes had been destroyed in the
area. Moreover, Kurdish forces for months barred these Arabs from returning to
their homes in Ninewa and Erbil provinces, while permitting Kurds to return to
those areas.
By Huiyu Yin
Nasrin Sotoudeh is a well-known lawyer and human rights
activist in Iran. Iranian security forces arrested her and several others on
their way back from a protest in October 2014. The protest was against a spate
of acid attacks targeting women in the central city of Esfahan. Authorities
released the others shortly after their arrest but detained Sotoudeh in an
Intelligence Ministry facility in Tehran for an additional seven hours and
threated to charge her with the crime of Moharebeh, or “enmity against God.”
This was not her first arrest. In 2010, Iran’s revolutionary
court sentenced her to six years in prison and a 10-year ban on practicing law.
Human
Rights Watch and other
international press believed that the national security charges against her
arose solely from her peaceful exercise of fundamental rights and zealous
defense of her clients, including many human rights activists. The Iranian Bar
Association’s disciplinary committee revoked her law license in 2014 to enforce
the revolutionary court’s conviction. Sotoudeh believed that the ban was
imposed under pressure from security, intelligence and judiciary officials.
By Huiyu Yin
Human Rights Watch recently published its 656-page World
Report 2015 to review human rights practices in more than 90 countries.
This report highlights that governments worldwide tend to ignore human rights
in the face of security challenges. This has been illustrated by incidents in
Syria, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, China and the United States.
In Syria, the government’s army has deliberately attacked
civilians in areas held by the opposing armed groups. Nigeria’s army has responded
to terrorism by detaining hundreds of civilians suspected of supporting Boko
Haram.
Executive Director Kenneth Roth said, “some governments make
the mistake of seeing human rights as a luxury for less trying times, instead
of an essential compass for political action. Rather than treating human rights
as a chafing restraint, policymakers worldwide would do better to recognize
them as moral guides offering a path out of crisis and chaos.”
By Huiyu Yin
Human rights activists and perhaps the general public in
Turkey just celebrated the government’s reforms to limit police power in February
2014. On October 22, 2014, the government reversed its position and introduced
a new bill that would expand the police’s search and seizure, and wiretapping
powers. In addition, the bill would introduce a new charge that could
potentially be used against government critics and restrict lawyers’ right to
access evidence against their clients at the investigation stage. The bill is
currently pending before the Turkish Parliament. After review by the Justice
Commission of the Parliament, it may be submitted to the General Assembly,
which may happen in the coming days.
Human Rights Watch identified five
particularly problematic elements of the 35-article bill, which amends
elements of the Criminal Procedure Code and Turkish Penal Code as well as other
laws.
By Ena Cefo
The Ebola health crisis has struck some of West Africa’s
poorest countries - Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, which are still recovering
from decades of political instability and violence. The over 2,400 deaths in
the region and a near-collapse of the health care systems in the countries, is
a block to the governments’ attempts to improve their domestic human rights
conditions. Human
Rights Watch has criticized the West African governments for inadequate
efforts to provide protections to health workers, arbitrary quarantine orders,
excessive use of force by the security forces responding to the health crisis,
and inadequate education of women, who are most vulnerable to the disease as a
result of their societal roles. While the final responsibility for theses
issues lies with the West African governments, the political and economic conditions
within the countries call for further international assistance to assure the
right to health in the struggling nations.
By Ena Cefo
Human
Rights Watch reports that Western-supported African Union troops stationed
in Somalia since 2007 under the name AMISOM have been sexually assaulting
Somali women as young as 12. AMISOM’s mission is to help restore stability in
Mogadishu, but soldiers have been accused of abusing their power to sexually
exploit vulnerable women. Interviews of the victims revealed signs pointing to
organized abuse that is tolerated by senior officials within AMISOM. As a
peacekeeping mission, AMISOM receives immunity from prosecution by Somalia and
the troops’ home countries reserve both the jurisdiction and the discretion to
prosecute misconduct.
By Julie Inglese
Citing widespread dismay with Russia’s anti-gay laws, a
coalition of more than 30 human rights and gay rights groups is calling on the
International Olympic Committee (IOC) to ensure that future Olympic host
countries do not have discriminatory laws on their books.
“Countries with laws
designed to discriminate against or attack the dignity or human rights of any
individual or group ... should not be given the honor and privilege of hosting
the Olympic [g]ames” asserted the coalition in a letter to the president of the
IOC.
A spokesman
for the IOC has responded to these pleadings by explaining that the current
charter includes provisions that do not allow discrimination, according to the Associated Press. However, he
concedes the proposed language could be considered at the upcoming IOC
deliberation.
The coalition includes Amnesty International, Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights Campaign, PEN, All Out, Athlete Ally, and the Russian LGBT Network. You can read more at Human Rights Watch.
