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	Defending human rights can never be considered a threat to national security by UN Office for Human Rights, agencies   Dec. 2020   China undermining human rights by locking up rights lawyers, UN independent expert says. (UN News)   China has mounted a "shocking" five-year assault on lawyers who stand up for human rights, putting them in prison and even torturing them, an expert mandated by the UN Human Rights Council said in a statement on Wednesday.   Mary Lawlor, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, said lawyers in China continue to be “charged, detained, disappeared and tortured”, five years on from a law enacted as an apparent national security measure.   “Since the so-called ‘709 crackdown’ began on 9 July 2015, the profession of human rights lawyer has been effectively criminalised in China,” Ms. Lawlor said in the statement.   She added that although she respected and appreciated the importance of safeguarding national security, governments should not exercise their right to do so at the cost of human rights and the lives and livelihoods of citizens. There was an inherent contradiction in targeting lawyers under the pretext of protecting the rule of law, the statement said.   Lawlor said the case of Chang Weiping, a human rights defender and lawyer who was arrested and disappeared on suspicion of “subversion of state power” for 10 days, epitomised China’s efforts to silence lawyers who spoke out about human rights.   Mr. Chang’s whereabouts are unknown after he made a video message complaining about his treatment, saying he had suffered torture and ill-treatment when security officials subjected him to “residential surveillance at a designated location” (RSDL), leaving him with physical and psychological after-effects. He was later returned to RSDL because of his complaint.   “In a shocking display of disregard for human rights, the authorities have re-arrested a human rights defender for courageously sharing his experience and denouncing human rights violations, and attempted to portray him as a threat to national security,” Ms. Lawlor said.   His lawyers have been unable to contact Mr. Chang and no charges have been brought against him, the statement said.   “The fact that the lawyers initially hired by Mr. Weiping’s family to represent him have both withdrawn from his case due to pressure they received from officials is also telling of the gravity and scale of the situation faced by human rights defenders and lawyers in China”, Ms. Lawlor added.   She said lawyers who have been detained and released during the crackdown reportedly faced “security measures” in the run-up to Human Rights Day on 10 December, and human rights lawyers’ families had been harassed, threatened, summoned for questioning and subjected to surveillance by the authorities. The had also been affected by the loss of household income.   “Fundamental human rights are not a threat to any Government or society, and neither are the individuals who defend those rights. I urge the Chinese authorities to release at once Chang Weiping and all other detained and disappeared human rights defenders.”   Ms. Lawlor’s statement was supported by two other Special Rapporteurs and the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.   http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Countries/AsiaRegion/Pages/CNIndex.aspx http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/SRHRDefenders/Pages/SRHRDefendersIndex.aspx http://news.un.org/en/story/2021/01/1081552 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/28/wuhan-citizen-journalist-jailed-for-four-years-in-chinas-christmas-crackdown http://www.dw.com/en/china-jails-journalist-over-wuhan-covid-outbreak-reporting/a-56071570 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55794071   Dec. 2020   Saudi Arabia: UN experts alarmed by Loujain Al-Hathloul trial, call for immediate release.   UN human rights experts expressed alarm at the commencement of proceedings today against woman human rights defender Loujain Al-Hathloul in a Saudi Specialised Criminal Court, and called for her immediate release from jail and for the “spurious” charges against her to be dropped.   Ms. Al-Hathloul had been instrumental in the movement to allow women to drive, and the push to end male guardianship laws. She was detained in May 2018 on national security grounds.   “We are extremely alarmed to hear that Ms Al-Hathloul, who has been in detention for more than two years on spurious charges, is now being tried by a Specialized Terrorism Court for exercising her fundamental rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association,” said Elizabeth Broderick, the Chairperson of the UN Working Group on Discrimination against Women and Girls.   “We call once again on Saudi Arabia to immediately release Ms. Al-Hathloul, a woman human rights defender who has greatly contributed to advancing women’s rights in a country where gender discrimination and stereotyping are deeply entrenched in the fabric of society.”   Ms. Al-Hathloul was accused of breaching article 6 of the Anti-Cybercrime Law, which punishes the production and transmission of material deemed to impinge on public order, religious values, public morals and private life. The authorities justified the charges based on allegations that Ms. Al-Hathloul along with other defenders “communicated with people and entities hostile to the King”, “cooperated with journalists and media institutions hostile to the King”, “provided financial support to foreign adversaries” and “recruited persons for information detrimental to the security of the Kingdom”.   Ms. Al-Hathloul met the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in February 2018 to share her observations on the state of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia.   “The government of Saudi Arabia has a primary responsibility and duty to protect, promote and implement all human rights and fundamental freedoms and cannot turn a blind eye to the arbitrary detention and allegation of torture of a woman whose only reason for imprisonment was to advance women’s rights,” said Broderick.   Ms. Al-Hathloul has not been allowed regular contact with her family during her detention. Her trials have been frequently cancelled and rescheduled 24 hours before the actual hearings, allowing her little time to prepare her defence.   At the end of October 2020, she started a hunger strike to protest against her conditions of detention. In mid-November, she interrupted the hunger strike following continued pressure from the authorities, who reportedly kept waking her every two hours to exhaust her psychologically.   The Working Group said that passing recent amendments to reform discriminatory legislation while violating the rights of women human rights defenders is shocking and deceptive. “It is not enough to pass laws when fundamental human rights are regularly breached in practice,” said Broderick of the Working Group.   “We urge the Government to end Ms. Al-Hathloul’s detention, as well as the detention of all the other women human rights defenders, and to conduct an impartial and independent investigation into the allegations of torture while in prison. Defending human rights can never be considered a threat to national security,” she said.   UN human rights experts have raised their concerns with the Saudi Government over the crackdown on women human rights defenders on a number of occasions.   http://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/16/saudi-prosecutor-seeks-maximum-jail-sentence-for-womens-rights-activist-loujain-al-hathloul   * Feb. 2021: Saudi authorities have released from prison women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul. However, she is banned from travel and has a suspended sentence, which allows the authorities to return her to prison at any time.   Dec. 2020   Iran: Human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh must be freed.   UN human rights experts today condemned the return to prison of woman human rights defender and lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, and called for her immediate release.   “We are dismayed that the authorities willingly chose to again place Nasrin Sotoudeh at heightened risk by ordering her return to prison at this time, despite her COVID-19 positive test and contrary to the opinion of medical professionals,” the experts said.   “By ordering her return to prison, the authorities have taken an action that may have life-threatening consequences for her and further extended her arbitrary imprisonment, in violation of their obligations under international human rights law.”   On 2 December, the Prosecutor’s Office ordered Nasrin Sotoudeh to return to Qarchak prison the same day, after she had been temporarily released on 7 November. Following Sotoudeh’s positive test for COVID-19, her initial five-day temporary release was extended by two weeks. On 30 November, doctors recommended a resting period of an additional two weeks due to her COVID-19 infection.   “We repeat our call to the authorities to release Nasrin Sotoudeh as a matter of urgency and to allow her to receive the health care and rest she requires. We deeply regret that despite calls by the UN and the international community, Iranian authorities continue to criminalise Nasrin Sotoudeh for her work in defence of human rights.”   On 13 November, independent experts appointed by the Human Rights Council had welcomed Sotoudeh’s temporary release, and urged the authorities to quash her convictions and ensure her release while reviewing her case.   Ms. Sotouteh, an internationally recognised human rights lawyer, is currently serving a lengthy prison sentence after being convicted on seven charges in March 2019. Her convictions relate to the exercise of her profession as a lawyer, including defending women human rights defenders. UN experts have on numerous occasions raised serious concerns that her current detention is arbitrary and called for her release.   http://www.rightlivelihoodaward.org/laureates/nasrin-sotoudeh/   Dec. 2020   UN experts: Bangladesh should release artist jailed over cartoons.   UN human rights experts today called on Bangladesh to immediately release celebrated cartoonist Ahmed Kabir Kishore due to his deteriorating health condition.   Mr. Kishore was arrested in May after his cartoons “Life in the Time of Corona,” satirising the country’s response to COVID-19, were posted on Facebook in March and April 2020. He was charged under the 2018 Digital Security Act for spreading false news and misinformation on the country’s COVID-19 response.   “Criticism of government policy, including through political satire and cartoons, is permitted under the rights to freedom of expression and cultural rights, and should not be criminalised,” the experts said.   They have repeatedly expressed serious concerns over the incompatibility of the Digital Security Act with international law and its use to silence critical voices.   In court hearings held virtually, Mr. Kishore’s bail applications have been denied five times, and no trial date has been set. An insulin-dependent diabetic, Mr. Kishore has heightened risk of COVID-19 complications.   “Around the world, COVID-19 outbreaks in prisons increase the danger of harm or death of individuals with underlying health conditions such as diabetes, hypertension and chronic respiratory conditions,” the experts said.   “Bangladeshi authorities have released thousands of individuals due to the threat that COVID-19 poses in prisons, and there seems to be no legitimate reason to refuse Mr. Kishore’s request for bail,” they said. “We urge Bangladesh to release Mr. Kishore on humanitarian grounds to avoid a further deterioration of his health.”   In addition to requesting the immediate release of Mr. Kishore, the experts called on the authorities to drop the criminal charges against him in light of Bangladesh’s obligations under international human rights law.   Earlier this year, the Cartoonists Rights Network International gave Kishore the Robert Russell Courage in Cartooning Award in recognition of his social engagement and defence of human rights.   “During the pandemic, it is more vital than ever to respect the rights of artists such as Ahmed Kabir Kishore to express dissenting views,” said the experts. “Not only are these rights internationally guaranteed, they play a vital role in promoting critical policy discussions. “Silencing their voices harms their human rights – and also puts everyone at greater risk.”   Dec. 2020   Colombia. 120 human rights defenders killed so far this year.   UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has condemned the heightened violence being carried out by non-state armed groups, criminal groups and other armed elements in Colombia, targeting peasants, indigenous and Afro-Colombian people, and called on State authorities to take concrete actions to effectively protect the population.   So far in 2020, the UN Human Rights Office in Colombia has documented 66 massacres, in which 255 people have been killed in 18 departments. In addition, the Office has received information on the killing of 120 human rights defenders so far this year.   The Nasa community has been one of the worse affected indigenous groups with 66 of its members in Northern Cauca department reported killed in 2020. The most recent incident occurred on 5 December, when five people, including a former FARC fighter in the process of being reintegrated, were reported killed in two separate incidents in Northern Cauca. In addition, on the same day, 24 leaders and authorities of the Nasa people received death threats.   (Since the signing of the Peace Agreement in November 2016, the UN Verification Mission in Colombia has also documented 244 killings of former FARC fighters).   Another recent attack occurred on 3 December in Chocó department, where an indigenous leader, Miguel Tapí Rito, was killed causing around 900 people in his community -- mostly women and children -- to flee to a nearby town, where they have been begging the State authorities to provide them with protection.   "It is tragic to see so many people fall victim to persistent violence across the country. In addition to those killed, the victims of course include those left behind, who remain almost completely defenceless," the High Commissioner said.   "I call on the Colombian authorities to take stronger and much more effective action to protect the population from this appalling and pervasive violence," she added. "It is the State's duty to be present throughout the country, implementing a whole range of comprehensive public policies, not only to clamp down on those responsible for the violence, but also to provide basic services and safeguard the fundamental rights of the population."   Bachelet stressed the urgency for the National Commission on Security Guarantees to develop a public policy to dismantle "the criminal groups that succeeded paramilitary structures and their support networks," as specifically requested in the 2016 Peace Agreement.   The High Commissioner also urged the authorities to conduct prompt, thorough, impartial, independent and transparent investigations into all allegations of human rights abuses and violations, and to uphold the rights of victims to justice, redress and reparation.   http://www.protecting-defenders.org/en/news http://www.ohchr.org/EN/issues/SRHRDefenders/Pages/SRHRDefendersindex.aspx http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/FreedomOpinion/Pages/OpinionIndex.aspx http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Disappearances/Pages/DisappearancesIndex.aspx http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/SP/Pages/News.aspx http://ishr.ch/latest-updates/hrc48-reprisal-cases-remain-high-including-in-current-council-member-states/ http://ishr.ch/action/campaigns/endreprisals/ http://www.ishr.ch/news/supporting-human-rights-defenders http://www.frontlinedefenders.org/ http://www.martinennalsaward.org/ http://www.amnesty.org/en/what-we-do/freedom-of-expression/ http://civicus.org/state-of-civil-society-report-2021/ http://www.ids.ac.uk/publications/navigating-civic-space-in-a-time-of-covid-synthesis-report/ http://www.hrw.org/topic/free-speech http://srdefenders.org/information-received/ Visit the related web page
	Apocalypse or co-operation? by Jayati Ghosh Project Syndicate, Social Europe Journal   The perfect storm of Covid-19 and climate change, and resulting economic damage, will likely trigger much more social and political instability.   The apocalypse is now. That is the glaring message of the perfect storm of Covid-19 and climate change which has broken. The pandemic is unlikely to end for years, as the novel coronavirus mutates into increasingly transmissible, drug-resistant variants. And the climate catastrophe is no longer ‘impending’ but playing out in real time.   The latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—whose assessments predate the extreme climate events of the past year—tells us that some drastic, adverse climatic changes are now irreversible.   These will affect every region, as the recent heatwaves, wildfires and floods demonstrate. They will also severely damage many natural species and adversely affect the possibilities for, and conditions of, human life.   Keeping future global warming to a manageable level (even if above the 2015 Paris climate agreement goal of 1.5C) will require a massive effort, involving sharp economic-policy reversals in every country. Major changes in the global legal and economic architecture will be essential.   For its part, the pandemic has devastated employment and livelihoods, pushing hundreds of millions of people, mostly in the developing world, into poverty and hunger.   The International Labour Organization’s World Employment and Social Outlook Trends 2021 shows the extent of the damage in grinding detail. In 2020, the pandemic caused the loss of nearly 9 per cent of total global working hours, equivalent to 255 million full-time jobs.   This trend has continued in 2021, with working-hour losses equivalent to 140 million full-time jobs in the first quarter and 127 million jobs in the second quarter.   On current trends, projected employment growth will be insufficient to make up for these losses. So, even in 2022, total employment will be lower than in 2019 by the equivalent of at least 23 million full-time jobs.   This is despite relatively strong job growth in the United States, meaning that labour-market deterioration in other, mostly poorer, regions will be even sharper and more intense. Moreover, the ‘new’ jobs associated with recovery from the pandemic will be predominantly low-paying and poor quality.   Meanwhile, economic inequality between and within countries has reached levels that were unimaginable in the already extremely unequal pre-pandemic world.   While many people face substantial income losses, declining access to basic needs, acute deprivation and hunger, a tiny minority of the extremely wealthy and a few large corporations have grabbed even more income and wealth, thereby multiplying their assets.   Today’s new forms of conspicuous consumption—such as the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, recently spending $5.5 billion for a four-minute ride around suborbital space—are literally out of this world.   This amount could instead have funded the Covid-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) facility to provide vaccines to two billion people in poor countries, who are currently unlikely to get them in the next two years.   This state of affairs obviously cannot continue for long without major social tensions and civil unrest. Indeed, the perfect storm we are beginning to experience will soon include much more social and political instability. Rather than spurring a progressive and transformative agenda, this could descend into ethnic, racial and other forms of conflicts, violence and chaos.   This nightmarish scenario can still be averted with substantially increased international co-operation on a few key issues. On climate, governments could collectively declare that they will cut carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions more sharply in order to reach net zero in a decade, rather than several decades.   Rich countries with high legacy emissions should obviously make the deepest cuts and transfer green technologies to the developing world without conditions, enabling the latter also to decarbonise rapidly.   Funds for climate adaptation are now essential, and proposed global public investment can enable swift action on this.   To control the still-raging pandemic, it is imperative to redistribute available vaccine doses immediately and remove legal constraints on widening production through compulsory licences.   In addition, the pharmaceutical firms that benefited from large Covid-19 vaccine-development subsidies must share their technology with other producers to increase supply, as the World Health Organization Council on the Economics of Health for All has recommended.   Building resilient and decentralised manufacturing capacity, including in the public sector, will be vital to deal effectively with future pandemics and other health crises.   As for economic policy, global tax co-operation is a no-brainer. Simple rules that would make multinational companies pay the same rate of tax as purely domestic firms, and ensure that the revenues are shared fairly between countries, would reduce inequality and provide fiscally constrained developing economies with much-needed resources.   Likewise, an international sovereign-debt resolution mechanism would reduce many developing countries’ fiscal burdens, freeing up space for urgent spending.   Regulating highly mobile cross-border finance, reining in credit-rating agencies and introducing conditions that make finance respond to social needs also will require international regulatory co-operation.   Unfortunately, the current state of global politics means this necessary and feasible agenda is unlikely to be realised. Leaders of major countries have so far displayed a pathetic lack of ambition.   Instead, they have paid lip-service to these existential challenges, while remaining subservient to private capital and vested interests and all too willing to play to national and local galleries.   The attitude of G7 governments, which are more obsessed with China’s rise than with preserving our increasingly fragile world, has been especially depressing. Their Covid-19 vaccine nationalism is short-sighted and obscene, while their rigid attachment to intellectual-property rights allows private firms to restrict knowledge and production to maximise their profits. These stances have reduced trust and hampered international co-operation to tackle the pandemic.   Humanity still has a chance to step back from the brink. Will it do so, or will future species wonder why we chose to participate actively in our own destruction? Visit the related web page
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