Category Archives: human rights

BMJ study: US police hospitalized 54,000 people in 2012 | Americas | DW.COM | 26.07.2016

One of the more challenging aspects of the research, Miller said, is how little official documentation of police violence can be found in law enforcement databases and how often police involvement in injuries is left out of medical records.”The surprise that had dropped on all of us around the time of starting this was that the data sets that I’ve worked with since I came into the field of injury, from the vital statistics on the number of people killed in the United States and the intent of those deaths, that the coroners and medical examiners were failing to code police involvement in almost half of the police-involved deaths,” Miller said. “And there are two separate reporting systems that the police are supposed to report police-involved deaths to – and both of those had even worse underreporting.””When you correct those firearm accounts, what you find is that one in every 13 people who died because someone else fired a firearm the police pulled the trigger,” he added. “A police officer pulled the trigger. And that’s scary.”

Source: BMJ study: US police hospitalized 54,000 people in 2012 | Americas | DW.COM | 26.07.2016

Humans of New York

“My father was a fascist. He was trained to be a terrorist in Mussolini’s army. He was anti-everybody. The Irish were ‘micks,’ black people were ‘niggers,’ and Jewish people were ‘kikes.’ His main weapon was pain. He raped me, locked me in closets, beat me with broom handles. He sent me to the hospital many times. He’d threaten to blow my brains out in the middle of the street. I absorbed a lot of his emotional energy. Sometimes his voice still comes out of me. When I’m really angry, and cussing myself out, I sound just like him. It’s him inside me, speaking to me. But I didn’t become him. My grandfather saved me. My grandmother was a fascist like my father. She counted her rosary beads and condemned the world, but my grandfather was a simple man. He lived with us. He always told me: ‘Your father is a nut.’ He hugged me and kissed me. I swung between two extremes: the love of my grandfather and the hate of my father. My grandfather knew how to love. My father couldn’t love because he was too filled with terror. He didn’t have the tools to love. Once when I was fifteen, I walked over to my father and gave him a big hug. He kept his arms stiff by his side. I said ‘I love you Dad,’ and his body started trembling. There was a terrified child inside of him. He wanted to love. And he wanted to be loved. He just didn’t know how.”

Source: Humans of New York

Obama at D.N.C.: Character Witness and Prominent Clinton Convert – The New York Times

Mr. Obama is well positioned to be a character witness for Mrs. Clinton, his advisers argue, because of his popularity — 53 percent of Americans approve of his job performance, according to this month’s New York Times/CBS News poll — and because he is a prominent convert to her cause, a once-bitter campaign rival who came to trust and respect her.In the interview on Sunday, Mr. Obama said he had become friends with Mrs. Clinton, but the two are not “bosom buddies.” The president said he was “cleareyed” about her strengths and weaknesses.“This is somebody who knows as much about domestic and foreign policy as anybody; is tough as nails; is motivated by what’s best for America and ordinary people; understands that, in this democracy that we have, things don’t always happen as fast as we’d like, and it requires compromise and grinding it out,” Mr. Obama said. “She’s not always flashy — and there are better speechmakers — but she knows her stuff.”

Source: Obama at D.N.C.: Character Witness and Prominent Clinton Convert – The New York Times

License to Kill: Forgery, evidence tampering and two dead teens | +972 Magazine

Usaid and Muhammed Qadus are shot to death in their own village by a major in the Israeli army who claims he only fired rubber bullets. But the bullets were real, and he admitted to lying and committing forgery to cover up his crime. Instead of being charged with a crime, he is promoted. By John Brown and Noam Rotem (Translated from Hebrew by Ofer Neiman) In the “License to Kill” series thus far, we have surveyed eight Military Police investigation files regarding the killing of Palestinians by IDF fire. Despite the fact that none of those killed posed a danger…

Source: License to Kill: Forgery, evidence tampering and two dead teens | +972 Magazine

Palestinian poet at heart of row on Israeli army radio broadcast | World news | The Guardian

ID Card was written in 1964, when Darwish was working as a literary assistant in Haifa on an Israeli communist party publication. Its most famous line – “Write it down! I’m an Arab” – was later borrowed for a documentary of his life. Like many of his poems, it balances complex emotions often within a single stanza: anger, pride in a sense of self, rejection of stereotyping and a warning of the consequences of oppression. It finishes: “Write down on the top of the first page: / I do not hate people / And I do not steal from anyone / But if I starve / I will eat my oppressor’s flesh / Beware, beware of my starving / And my rage.”

Source: Palestinian poet at heart of row on Israeli army radio broadcast | World news | The Guardian

الكاتبة الفلسطينية نادية حرحش توقّع بالقاهرة روايتها “في ظلال الرجال” | مصريات

Hosted a “D” Centre for Studies and Research in Cairo signing ceremony and discuss the novel “in the shadows of men,” published by Dar Ibn Rushd, the Palestinian writer and professor of Islamic studies at the University of Jerusalem Nadia Harhash.

And witnessed the signing ceremony and discuss the novel presence of Dr Yasser Ayoub, editor of 7 days, the Syrian and Jihad Saad artist and publisher Bisan aggression, a large number of intellectuals and artists of Palestinians and Syrians expatiate Egypt.

Initially Nadia Harhash emphasized the fact that the writing was liberated from many of the constraints and concerns, and opened her many windows on the world again and helped in the treatment of a lot of pain and aches accumulated in lipstick and body.

Harhash added that this novel does not reflect Vsltinih woman trip, but as far as expressing Arab women as a whole, Syria or Egypt or Sudan Gulf or Lebanese or Moroccan or Tunisian or Libyan.

استضاف مركز “دال” للدراسات والابحاث بالقاهرة حفل توقيع ومناقشة رواية “في ظلال الرجال”  الصادرة عن دار ابن رشد، للكاتبة الفلسطينية وأستاذة الدراسات الإسلامية بجامعة القدس نادية حرحش. وشهد حفل توقيع ومناقشة الرواية حضور الدكتور ياسر أيوب رئيس تحرير مجلة 7 أيام، والفنان السوري جهاد سعد والناشرة بيسان عدوان، وعدد كبير من المثقفين والمبدعين الفلسطينين والسوريين المقمين بمصر. في البداية أكدت نادية حرحش على كون الكتابة حررتها من كثير من القيود والهواجس، وفتحت لها العديد من النوافذ على العالم من جديد وساعدتها في علاج الكثير من الألم والأوجاع المتراكمة في الروج والجسد. وأضافت حرحش أن هذه الرواية لا تعبر عن رحلة امرأة فسلطينية بل بقدر ما تعبر عن المرأة العربية ككل مصرية أو سورية أو خليجية أو سودانية أو لبنانية أو مغربية أو تونسية او ليبية. الرواية عبارة عن رحلة في عمق امرأة لها الكثير من التوقعات وخيبات الأمل، الهروب من الأحلام والكوابيس، التحديات والتطلعات، نقاط القوة والضعف، كما أن بها أيضا الكثير من المناورات بين الأمومة والأنوثة و التضحية والعطاء، الحب والرحمة، الغضب والانتقام.. إنها حياة النضال وعدم التوقف عن محاولات الصمود، رواية عن الباقين على قيد الحياة أو المحاولين البقاء على قيد الحياة في مختلف الطبقات، وعلى حافة السلطة الأبوية والاحتلال، إنها حياة امرأة تمضي بعيدا عن الرجال أو ظلال الرجال. ومن جانبه قال الفنان السوري جهاد سعد إن رواية “في ظلال الرجال” أشبه بسيرة ذاتية وتاريخية للمرأة في الشرق، حيث تجمع الكاتبة بين الحاضر والماضي والواقع والتاريخ. وأضاف “جهاد” الرواية تطرح العديد من الأسئلة المسكوت عنها وتقتحم تابوهات كثيرة عن الطفولة والذكريات والحب والزواج وعلاقتنا بإجسادنا وعن الإيمان والإتجار بالدين وعن النضال ضد المحتل والثورة التي تبدأ من داخل الإنسان، قبل أن تتحقق في السياق العام.

Source: الكاتبة الفلسطينية نادية حرحش توقّع بالقاهرة روايتها “في ظلال الرجال” | مصريات

British police report over 6,000 hate crimes in month since Brexit vote | News | DW.COM | 22.07.2016

The National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) said it had recorded 6,193 incidents of hate crime from mid-June to mid-July, figures obtained from police forces in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.The most commonly reported crimes were harassment, assault and other violence such as verbal abuse or spitting. The second and third most prevalent incidents were public order offences, followed by criminal damage.Since the EU referendum result was declared on June 24, Muslims and Eastern Europeans have said they have been particularly targeted.

Source: British police report over 6,000 hate crimes in month since Brexit vote | News | DW.COM | 22.07.2016

Texas Rape Victim Was Jailed for Fear She Would Not Testify, Lawsuit Says – The New York Times – The last straw in WTF News today!

A rape victim who was jailed in Texas for nearly a month because prosecutors feared she would not return to testify after having a mental breakdown on the stand has sued the Harris County district attorney’s office, county officials and jail employees.The woman, identified as Jane Doe in the lawsuit, was held in the general population at the county jail — the same place where the rape suspect, Keith Hendricks, was housed. There, the suit says, she was misclassified as the perpetrator of a sexual assault — not as a victim — attacked by an inmate, denied medication and punched in the face by a guard.

Source: Texas Rape Victim Was Jailed for Fear She Would Not Testify, Lawsuit Says – The New York Times

Purvi Patel has 20-year sentence for inducing own abortion reduced | US news | The Guardian – The world that Trump’s VP candidate is proud of – putting women in jail if they have a stillborn child

Patel’s conviction, in 2015, made her a national symbol in the debate swirling around abortion. Last week, when Donald Trump selected the Indiana governor, Mike Pence, as his partner on the Republican presidential ticket, many abortion rights groups invoked Patel’s name as a cautionary tale. Trump has said women who have illegal abortions ought to face “some form of punishment”. And activists had prevailed upon Pence to clarify the 2009 law used to convict her, without success.The ruling was not a uniform victory for Patel. The court held that the state had mounted sufficient evidence to show Patel knew the infant was born alive. Patel’s appeals team had challenged the integrity of the forensic test, the controversial “lung float test”, that prosecutors used to argue the infant was not stillborn. But the court agreed with Patel that the state did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the infant could have survived. It reduced her child neglect conviction from a class A felony to a class D.“The Indiana court of appeals … ultimately failed Purvi Patel,” Yamani Hernandez, the director of the National Network of Abortion Funds, said Friday. “People of color are bearing the brunt of unscientific laws and misplaced moral outrage against abortion, which is blurring into the territory of miscarriage, putting any pregnant person at risk of prosecution and incarceration. It needs to stop, and the decision didn’t go far enough to restore full justice for Purvi Patel.”AdvertisementA jury convicted Patel in 2015, and in May of this year, a team of volunteer attorneys appealed against her conviction.Prosecutors argued at trial that Patel gave birth to a 25-week-old live infant that could have survived if Patel had sought medical attention instead of abandoning the infant. Patel’s attorneys, who disputed the infant’s gestational age, argued the infant was stillborn, and not developed enough to survive outside the womb no matter what Patel did.Patel’s case quickly became a flashpoint in the country’s heated debate over abortion access. The prosecution painted Patel as hard-hearted and calculating. Women’s rights advocates countered that Indiana’s numerous restrictions on abortion had prevented Patel from terminating her pregnancy in a clinic, and they fingered her trial as part of a pattern of overzealous prosecutions against women who suffer miscarriages.

Source: Purvi Patel has 20-year sentence for inducing own abortion reduced | US news | The Guardian