Amnesty International called it "shocking and preventable." On 27 January 2008, Australian indigenous leader and land rights activist Ian Ward — "one of the last nomads born in the Gibson Desert" — died in custody.
The Warburton man was being driven 915km from Laverton in the Western Desert to Kalgoorlie for a mention in relation to […]
The right to vote is universal, but not absolute, according to the UN Committee on Human Rights. The Australian Constitution reflects that understanding, according to a recent decision of the High Court dubbed "the biggest constitutional law case of the year", with a bearing on this month’s federal election.
The Australian Constitution says that parliamentarians must […]
Some 700 people were arrested in the South Pacific nation of Tonga last year following riots on 16 November. Arson and looting on the main island of Tongatapu caused extensive damage to the capital Nuku’alofa and beyond.
A preliminary human rights report issued shortly after the crisis documented violence and other abuses by police and soldiers […]
The highest international authority on civil and political rights has found Australia is violating the rights of a Bangladeshi asylum seeker detained for nearly seven-and-a-half years.
Danyal Shafiq, 34, was raised in an orphanage in Bangladesh. Fearing torture, harsh imprisonment or death at the hands of either Bangladeshi police or the Sharbahara Party, he fled to […]
Former chief justice Alastair Nicholson has written a scathing rebuttal of Australian Attorney-General Philip Ruddock’s defence of his government’s abandonment of David Hicks, the Australian citizen still imprisoned by the US at Guantánamo Bay after more than five years. Nicholson’s point, made clearly and authoritatively, is that Hicks cannot get a fair trial by US […]
Rioting erupted on the streets of Tonga on 16 November. Police and soldiers were given emergency powers while Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand sent in troops. Shortly thereafter reports emerged of maltreatment of prisoners in custody. Some of those said to have been abused were peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators with no involvement in the unrest.
Tongan soldiers allegedly […]
It couldn’t last. Two good-news posts in a row (25 July), but now I’m afraid my subject matter turns to human rights hell.
Since the de facto privatisation of the health system in China in the early 1980s, most Chinese can’t afford decent medical care. Meanwhile, human organs are sold to rich Chinese and foreigners for […]
Outgoing UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, has previously condemned the US-led war on Iraq as illegal. He has also called for the detention camps at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba to be closed.
Yesterday, he praised the Bush Administration’s decision to respect Guantánamo detainees’ inalienable legal rights to the protection afforded by common article 3 of the Geneva […]
Michael Gawenda, former editor-in-chief of Melbourne's only broadsheet, The Age, and now its US correspondent, does not mince his words. He describes David Hicks, that 30 year-old British-Australian on whose behalf I and many others have argued vigorously for a fair trial or else release from Camp Delta at Guantánamo Bay, as "obviously […]
Even Afghanistan insisted its citizens be released from Guantánamo. Why is David Hicks, with dual British and Australian citizenship, still there after nearly five years? Why is anyone still there after the decision of the US Supreme Court that the proposed military tribunals are unlawful? Why is Australia still supporting the continued detention and […]