Category Archives: human rights

Germany planning to ′massively′ limit privacy rights | Germany | DW.COM | 25.11.2016

Perhaps most contentiously, the draft allows the government to deny people the basic right to know what personal data is being collected if “the release of the data endangers public safety and order, or disadvantages the well-being of the country, or the state in another way.”

Source: Germany planning to ′massively′ limit privacy rights | Germany | DW.COM | 25.11.2016

Cause of Severe Injury at Pipeline Protest Becomes New Point of Dispute – The New York Times

Sophia Wilansky, 21, who grew up in the Bronx, rested in a Minneapolis hospital bed, her father by her side, recovering from surgery to try to save her left hand and arm after an explosion at a pipeline protest in North Dakota this week.“From an inch below the elbow, to an inch above her wrist, the muscle is blown off,” her father, Wayne Wilansky, said from the hospital, Hennepin County Medical Center. “The radius bone, a significant amount of it, is blown away. The arteries inside her arm are blown away. The median nerve is mostly blown away.”As many as 20 operations lie ahead, Mr. Wilansky said, and it was unclear whether she would keep the arm.

Source: Cause of Severe Injury at Pipeline Protest Becomes New Point of Dispute – The New York Times

I Was Raped / I Was Battered – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

I passed signs boasting “98% of Our University is Nonviolent!” while on my way to a sexual assault survivors group to meet with twenty other women who were raped on campus in the last year.Hers: four men behind the science building, her face grating the asphalt, turns taken from behind. Two officers found her, they took no notes, they asked her to calm down, she was hysterical.Hers: a rapist with a name engraved on some campus building, a rape kit that showed her lacerations, a rape kit that showed his semen, a rape kit that was thrown out prematurely, a rapist that walked.Hers: a professor, but he was tenured.Hers: a long walk to the police, freshly raped, dress wadded between her legs, bloodied from all that tearing. The officer asked if she was sure it wasn’t her period. “Are you sure?” he pressed. “Are you sure? Are you sure?”Hers: a drug in a drink at a frat party, her body left between the cars in a gravel parking lot, a mandatory alcohol-education course courtesy of the Institution. The class met on Fridays; she heard the frat parties’ music through the cinder-block walls.Once, we counted all the other rape survivors we knew. There should have been two hundred of us there, not twenty.And at the end of the semester, the Institution reported zero assaults. They hung banners in the halls.

Source: I Was Raped / I Was Battered – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

Who Are the Millions of ‘Bad Hombres’ Slated for US Deportation? Mostly imaginary people and scapegoats. Next will be whomever opposes Trump – you!

The time for Latin America to resist bigotry and racism has thus arrived. In this task, we must not resort to nationalist discourses that merely mirror, from the other side of the looking glass, the stereotype of evil gringos who hate bad hombres.Rather, Latin American responses to racism should draw both from humanism and an accurate knowledge of the past, as well as of human rights and international law.Two positive steps we could take are addressing the countries’ own crime problems while respecting rights and due process, and treating with dignity the approximately 500,000 Central American immigrants who cross into Mexico each year.Like it or not, history and geography have now made Mexicans the vanguard of resistance, and the world will be watching.

Source: Who Are the Millions of ‘Bad Hombres’ Slated for US Deportation?

Germany supporting ethnic cleansing in Kurdish Iraq – www.german-foreign-policy.com

BERLIN/ERBIL/BAGHDAD (Own report) – In the wake of the war against IS (Daesh), the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, which is supported by Berlin, is forcibly displacing the Arabic-speaking inhabitants, aimed at a consolidation of the Kurdish dominated territory, as was reported by Human Rights Watch (HRW). According to HRW’s investigation, the Kurdish Peshmerga has deliberately destroyed the homes of Arabic-speaking Sunnis in at least 21 villages and towns in northern Iraq, while leaving intact the Kurdish-owned houses. The Kurdistan Regional Government under President Masoud Barzani is striving to incorporate as many areas as possible – particularly the oil rich region Kirkuk – into the Kurdish autonomous region before seceding from Iraq. For decades, Barzani and his clan have been cooperating closely with politicians from the Federal Republic of Germany. Berlin was also promised access to the large oil reserves in the autonomous region. In return, Germany, above all, has been supporting the Peshmerga in its war against Daesh, while refusing similar aid to the Baghdad government. The German government is also ignoring the eviction of the Arabic-speaking inhabitants of the predominantly Kurdish region.

Source: www.german-foreign-policy.com

Currently In Limbo, ‘Ghost Bike’ Memorials For Fallen Cyclists May Get Formalized: SFist

Today, the Examiner writes that Warner and Mitchell are closer to getting their wish. Supervisor Norman Yee introduced a resolution last week to permit bike memorials as well as to implement “an immediate moratorium on the removal of any ‘Ghost Bike’ for one year so long as they are not obstructing local ordinances, such as blocking pedestrian egress.”According to a statement from Yee, “ghost bikes are powerful reminders to our community that we still have a long way to get to Vision Zero,” or the city’s goal of zero traffic related deaths by 2024. The resolution calls on the Bicycle Advisory Committee to form a partnership with Public Works and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency “for an ordinance for the permitted placement of ‘Ghost Bikes’ or other memorials by citizens who wishes to do so.”

Source: Currently In Limbo, ‘Ghost Bike’ Memorials For Fallen Cyclists May Get Formalized: SFist

Lebanon builds wall around Palestinian refugee camp | Middle East | DW.COM | 22.11.2016

“The Lebanese authorities are building an apartheid wall surrounding the Ain al-Helweh camp in Sidon,” tweeted an account called Yarmouk News. Commentators on social media have used the term apartheid to describe the wall, claiming that it isolates and separates the Palestinians in the camp from the rest of Lebanese society.After the war of Arab-Israeli war of 1948, many displaced Palestinians were forced to flee to Lebanon. The majority of these Palestinians remain stateless refugees even today. The United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) provides food, medicine, education and other necessities to the Palestinian population in Lebanon. The Lebanese government bars Palestinians from taking white-collar jobs such as in the law and engineering fields. Palestinian refugees in Jordan, on the other hand, are eligible for Jordanian citizenship.

Source: Lebanon builds wall around Palestinian refugee camp | Middle East | DW.COM | 22.11.2016

The Arizona Tribe That Knows How to Stop a Trump Wall – Intercontinental Cry – Not Really but they hope so.

President-elect Donald Trump says that he will build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. It will stop undocumented immigrants from entering the country. It will stop drugs from entering the country. It will be 50 feet tall. It will be nearly a thousand miles long. And it will cut the traditional lands of the […]

Source: The Arizona Tribe That Knows How to Stop a Trump Wall – Intercontinental Cry

In the short term, when it comes to securing the border, there are no easy answers or solutions. But when it comes to working with tribal nations on the issue, in the eyes of the Tohono O’odham, Trump’s proposed wall represents either gross ignorance or blatant disregard for tribal sovereignty. And if construction begins, it could signal the winding back of clocks on U.S.-tribal relations on the border.

“I can’t even imagine how far it would set us back,” says Tatum. “More than a hundred years.”

{I cannot imagine that Mr. Trump could care a whit about tribal law, or the wishes of the Tohono O’odham – he cares about Trump and that is about as far as his caring goes.}

WHO scales back Zika public health emergency | CIDRAP

(Becoming clearer and clearer – to me – releases such as this one, are overly influenced by political and economic considerations rather than health concerns)

 

Based on a recommendation from its emergency committee today, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Zika virus infections and related microcephaly cases no longer constitute a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), and efforts to battle and research the disease will now be folded into the WHO’s regular work, where it will receive high-level attention and more sustained funding.

Source: WHO scales back Zika public health emergency | CIDRAP

George Takei Responds to Trump Surrogate’s “Dangerous” Japanese-American Internment Camp Comments | Hollywood Reporter

George Takei is taking a firm stand against the recent comments by a Donald Trump surrogate that the treatment of Japanese Americans during WWII serves as “precedent” for a national Muslim registry now. Takei called the remarks “dangerous” and warned against history repeating itself. “The Japanese-American internment was an egregious violation of our national values and principles, a terrible event for which Congress apologized in 1988,” said Takei. “To invoke that dark chapter as a precedent for any action against any minorities today is a morally bankrupt and dangerous step, completely out-of-bounds with contemporary notions of civil and human rights.”

Source: George Takei Responds to Trump Surrogate’s “Dangerous” Japanese-American Internment Camp Comments | Hollywood Reporter