Posts tagged Human Rights
Design Action Collective has created this poster to celebrate the solidarity of Arab, African, Middle Eastern, Muslim, South Asian (AAMEMSA) communities. Our communities are diverse, but have all been targeted similarly in this climate of Islamophobia. The ten year anniversary of 9/11 is upon us — this unique political moment is an opportunity to stand together and bring our strong, united voices to the national immigrant rights movement.
Like Design Action Collection on facebook; graphic design for social change.Stop hate crimes.
This will now be my new profile picture. Especially now when we are coming near 9/11 where islamophobia always spikes
(via socialuprooting)
…the modern slave trade is booming. More than 27 million people are enslaved around the world, doing work for no pay as prostitutes, farm laborers, factory workers, or domestic servants…advocates believe the pace of enslavement has increased during the past two decades as the price of slaves has decreased—pushed along by globalization, higher poverty levels, and crumbling national borders.
more, here.
(via so-treu)
Human Trafficking
One victim, “Harriet,” is described in the report as an American girl who ran away from home when she was 11 years old and moved in with a 32-year-old man who sexually and physically abused her and persuaded her to become a prostitute.
“In the next two years, Harriet became addicted to drugs and contracted numerous sexually transmitted diseases,” according to the report.The police arrested Harriet when she was 13 and charged her with committing prostitution.
They made no efforts to find her pimp,” the report says. “Harriet was placed on probation for 18 months in the custody of juvenile probation officials. Her lawyers have appealed the decision, arguing that since she could not legally consent to sex, she cannot face prostitution-related charges.
—The 373-page “Trafficking in Persons Report 2010” says some 12.3 million adults and children are in forced labor, bonded labor, and forced prostitution around the world. Only 4,166 trafficking prosecutions were successful last year, according to the report.-
“ Let’s argue the following, then, a pretty strange point: the law on the hijab is a pure capitalist law. It orders femininity to be exposed. In other words, having the female body circulate according to the market paradigm is obligatory. For teenagers, i.e. the teeming center of the entire subjective universe, the law bans any holding back.”
“ Somewhere in Gaza, someone may once have tried to fashion a missile from a chicken hatchery, a goat, a bunch of coriander and a fishing rod stuck together with jam.”
Lindsey Hilsum, UK’s Channel 4 News International Editor
Hilsum challenges the rationale behind banning of the aforementioned items not allowed into the Gaza Strip by Israel’s blockade. If the interests for the blockade were solely for self-defense (as many apologists are quick to argue), then what does a prohibition of chocolate, pencils and notebooks have anything to do with stopping missiles from being fired into Israel? It doesn’t, because the blockade is a means to a political objective. As Joshua Holland, editor and senior writer from AlterNet put it, “The siege of Gaza is, and always was, meant to crush Gaza’s economy, impose severe suffering on the population and ultimately make it impossible for Hamas to govern.” By the use of such collective punishment, Israel wields a brutality that comes ever closer to another instance of collective punishment that Israel, by her existence, does not let the world forget.
(via danielextra)
spot on.
What exactly is the blockade of Gaza?
Don’t let the Israeli government’s propaganda abroad or State-side obfuscate the fact that there is a humanitarian crisis brewing in the Gaza Strip. We have previously published a list of allowed and disallowed items and supplies that can and cannot be brought to Gazans, but what has been broad impact of the blockade to the territory’s electricity, water, industry, health, and food? Yousef Munayyer, Executive Director of the Jerusalem Fund and the Palestinian Center, wrote this fact sheet for Foreign Policy:
Electricity: The siege has led to a significant lack of power in the Gaza Strip. In 2006, Israel carried out an attack on Gaza’s only power plant and never permitted the rebuilding to its pre-attack capacity (down to producing 80 megawatts maximum from 140 megawatts). According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), the daily electricity deficit has increased since January of 2010 with the plant only able to operate one turbine producing only 30 megawatts compared to its previous average of 60-65 megawatts in 2009. The majority of houses have power cuts at least eight hours per day. Some have no electricity for long as 12 hours a day. The lack of electricity has led to reliance on generators, many of which have exploded from overwork, killing and maiming civilians. Oxfam reported that “[in 2009], a total of 75 Palestinians died from carbon monoxide gas poisoning or fires from generators, and 15 died and 27 people were injured in the first two months of this year.”
Water: Israel has not permitted supplies into the Gaza Strip to rebuild the sewage system.Amnesty International reports that 90-95 percent of the drinking water in Gaza is contaminated and unfit for consumption. The United Nations even found that bottled water in Gaza contained contaminants, likely due to the plastic bottles recycled in dysfunctional factories. The lack of sufficient power for desalination and sewage facilities results in significant amounts of sewage seeping into Gaza’s costal aquifer—the main source of water for the people of Gaza.
Industry: Prior to the siege, the industrial sector employed 20 percent of Gaza’s labor force. One year after the siege began, the Palestinian Federation of Industries reported that “61% of the factories have completely closed down. 1% was forced to change their scope of work in order to meet their living expenses, 38% were partially closed (sometimes means they operate with less than 15% capacity)”. A World Health Organization report from this year states: “In the Gaza Strip, private enterprise is practically at a standstill as a consequence of the blockade. Almost all (98%) industrial operations have been shut down. The construction sector, which before September 2000 provided 15% of all jobs, has effectively halted. Only 258 industrial establishments in Gaza were operational in 2009 compared with over 2400 in 2006. As a result, unemployment rates have soared to 42% (up from 32% before the blockade).”
Health: Gaza’s health sector, dramatically overworked, was also significantly damaged by Operation Cast Lead. According to UN OCHA, infrastructure for 15 of 27 of Gaza’s hospitals, 43 of 110 of its primary care facilities, and 29 of its 148 ambulances were damaged or destroyed during the war. Without rebuilding materials like cement and glass due to Israeli restrictions, the vast majority of the destroyed health infrastructure has not been rebuilt. Many medical procedures for advanced illnesses are not available in Gaza. 1103 individuals applied for permits to exit the Israeli-controlled Erez crossing for medical treatment in 2009. 21 percent of these permits were denied or delayed resulting in missed hospital appointments, and several have died waiting to leave Gaza for treatment.
Food: A 2010 World Health Organization report stated that “chronic malnutrition in the Gaza Strip has risen over the past few years and has now reached 10.2%. Micronutrient deficiencies among children and women have reached levels that are of concern.” According to UN OCHA:“Over 60 percent of households are now food insecure, threatening the health and wellbeing of children, women and men. In this context, agriculture offers some practical solutions to a humanitarian problem. However, Israel’s import and access restrictions continue to suffocate the agriculture sector and directly contribute to rising food insecurity. Of particular concern, farmers and fishers’ lives are regularly put at risk, due to Israel’s enforcement of its access restrictions. The fact that this coastal population now imports fish from Israel and through tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border speaks to the absurdity of the situation.” 72 percent of Gaza’s fish profit comes from beyond the three nautical mile mark, but further restrictions by Israel’s naval blockade prevents Gazans from fishing beyond that mark. Between 2008 and 2009 the fishing catch was down 47 percent.
GUANTANAMO BAY — His nickname wasn’t “Monster,” he admonished the lawyer. It was “The Monster.” That was what the Bagram Collection Point’s interrogators, guards — and most especially detainees — called Army interrogator Damien Corsetti. And it was important to him that the court correctly record his story.
Back then — in 2002 at Bagram, and later at Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison — Corsetti was as fearsome as his handle. Although acquitted, he went before a court-martial proceeding related to the abuse of a detainee in Iraq. Now, Corsetti is an unemployed veteran of two wars, unable to work because of post-traumatic stress disorder, and an infamous figure in the U.S.’s post-9/11 history of torture.
But he testified on Wednesday morning from a remote location on behalf of one of the former inmates at Bagram whom he used to intimidate and brutalize: Omar Khadr, the 23-year old Canadian citizen who has been in U.S. custody for nearly eight years. The large man once known as “The Monster” — the nickname is tattooed in Italian on his stomach — provided rare sworn testimony about the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody in the Afghanistan war’s early days, the product of what he described as command pressure for intelligence and unclear rules about permissible interrogator behavior.
Harper government closes Human Rights Commission offices
Canadians living in British Columbia, Ontario and the Atlantic provinces will no longer have access to walk-in or telephone services at a CHRC office even remotely close to where they live. The urban centres where the CHRC offices are being closed represent a high percentage of racialized people. In fact, 60 per cent of all racialized people in Canada live in Vancouver, Toronto and Halifax.
10 bucks says that if someone threw a shoe at Harper, he couldn’t dodge it. with that said, shoe-throwing reporters of the world heed my call: your talents are desperately needed in Canada. hurrrrry.
No Way Through highlights mobility restrictions imposed in the West Bank, that are limiting its inhabitants’ access to health care, thus violating a fundamental human right.
Written and Directed by: Alexandra Monro + Sheila Menon
Mentor: Jim Threapleton
Music: The Thirst
Ctrl.Alt.Shift is a movement for a new generation fighting social and global injustice. These films were made by members of the community to raise awareness of issues they care about.
Revival of Guantanamo Military Commissions a Blow to Justice
(Washington, DC) - The Obama administration’s decision to revive military commissions for detainees at Guantanamo will prolong the injustice of Guantanamo, Human Rights Watch said today. The commissions will provide substandard justice, and will likely be beset by litigation and delays.
“The military commissions system is flawed beyond repair,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “By resurrecting this failed Bush administration idea, President Obama is backtracking dangerously on his reform agenda.”
[…]
Today, the administration announced that it would resume trials of Guantanamo detainees by military commissions under new rules that would offer defendants greater legal protections. According to the administration, the new rules would prohibit the introduction of evidence obtained through coercion, tighten the use of hearsay evidence than under the existing military commission rules, and allow detainees greater choice in selecting defense lawyers.
Although the proposed changes to the commissions would be improvements, they do not address fundamental concerns about the flawed nature of such tribunals, Human Rights Watch said. The very purpose of the commissions was to permit trials that lacked the full due process protections available to defendants in federal courts.
Some of the most egregious problems of the military commissions are the result of starting a system from scratch. Because the rules of procedure were ad hoc and untested, it was difficult to prepare a defense. For instance, the system in place to provide discovery to defendants left defense counsel without access to critical - and in some cases possibly exculpatory - evidence. Many issues became subject to myriad legal challenges, resulting in long and unnecessary delays.
PLEASE, take a minute of your time to watch this video.
This is a video of a little Palestinian girl in Gaza. She is speaking from the heart. Speaking from the honest heart of a child. She knows not about propaganda and so on but the simple distinctions between good and bad.
Watching this video just broke my heart. Our problems about our simple lives where we worry about our ex-bfs and gfs, clothes, shoes, how thin we are are all so trivial compared to the suffering of these people.
From the documentary “Occupation: 101” (entire video at link), for anyone who believes that other peoples problems are simply other peoples problems, you need to watch this video. The problem in Palestine is just one of the circumstances that many countries of the world find themselves in, where we discover the unimaginable suffering of innocents imposed on them by illegal and immoral state practices. You owe it to your humanity to watch this video, to realize the injustices, and to act upon what you know. thank you.
