Recent developments in policing under the Baillieu government in the Australian state of Victoria threaten the right to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression. The 7-month old Baillieu conservative coalition government last month created two 21-member 'public order response teams' of police to 'stamp out antisocial behaviour' and 'break up public protest', reports the Herald […]
Expatriate Australian journalist John Pilger (right), in accepting the Sydney Peace Prize last week, was very critical of silence and lies in Australian polity and complicit bystanders among the Australian press and public. He calls us from slumber to form a 'Fifth Estate' of citizen monitoring — that eternal vigilance that is the price of […]
When people like Desmond Tutu describe the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories as apartheid, it's not mere hyperbole. Israel's self-proclaimed 'policy of separation' seeks to segregate Palestinians and Jews in the West Bank, writes Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard. Apartheid is an Afrikaans word meaning literally, separateness. It's hard to see how Israel's policy […]
Last month at the UN General Assembly, rock legend Bono lamented that for ten years he has begged the G8 for US$25 billion to relieve hunger and disease in Africa, with limited success. Suddenly, the United States has $700 billion to spend on Wall Street. Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz estimates that the US bailout package […]
If you agree that Israel must stop violating the human right to water and sanitation in the Occupied Territories, please consider signing this petition to the Knesset: "The human right to water and sanitation is protected under international law. Yet in the State of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, this right is being violated […]
The United Nations wants to hear about people suited to the top human rights positions known as ‘Special Procedures mandate-holders’. Also called Special Rapporteurs, Special Representatives or Independent Experts, or appointed to Working Groups, these leading experts investigate human rights violations and their causes. There are presently 13 country mandates concerned with the human rights […]
A crucial feature of the UN human rights armoury is under threat: the Special Procedures. Some members of the newly constituted Human Rights Council are anxious to end this form of scrutiny, to the alarm of human rights NGOs. The credibility of the UN itself is at stake, says Amnesty International. The United Nations, like […]
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 […]
"The violation of human rights in this Territory is massive." So found the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, on a visit to Gaza this week. She went to Beit Hanoun, a town in northern Gaza which the Israeli army shelled heavily on 8 November. Nineteen people were killed, all of them civilian. […]
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