The US is denying the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture unfettered access to detainee Bradley Manning. Private first class Manning was arrested in May 2010 on suspicion of leaking incriminating military documents to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. He remains in US custody awaiting court marshall. The conditions of his detention have been widely criticised […]
A spokesman for US Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, has been forced to resign after criticising the way US serviceman Bradley Manning (pictured right) is being treated while in pre-trial detention. Describing Manning's conditions as "mistreatment," then-assistant secretary of state for public affairs, Philip 'P.J.' Crowley, said: "What is being done to Bradley Manning […]
US psychologists concerned about the treatment of alleged Wikileaker 23 year-old Bradley Manning have written an open letter to the US Secretary of Defense. They describe the conditions in which he has been held since July 2010: "in solitary confinement … in his cell for approximately 23 hours a day, a cell approximately 6 feet […]
While she was inside, prison authorities refused to allow indigenous activist Vicki Roach to give media interviews about her remarkable 2007 High Court Constitutional challenge. Instead, she wrote a letter to Anita Barraud of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation outlining some of her arguments: "Excluding us from the democratic process while we are in prison, however […]
The "villains' charter" debate has reached Australia, it would seem. Reviewing Victoria's Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities 12 months after it came into effect, the Sunday Herald-Sun's 'star political reporter' Ellen Whinnett wrote last month that the Charter had been "hijacked by criminals." Her view echoes Britain's Daily Mail which attacks the UK's 'disastrous' […]
I had a dispiriting conversation with two Australian law graduates this week. They regard international human rights treaties as 'soft law', that is, not imposing real, binding obligations. In my book (real and figurative), treaties are 'hard law' (ie., conventions, covenants, protocols and the like), while declarations, recommendations, codes, principles and guidelines remain 'soft' law […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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