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Ed Webb

Algerian regime steps up repression against the protests - 0 views

www.al-monitor.com/...tivists-arrested-protests.html

Algeria protests revolution repression authoritarianism

shared by Ed Webb on 21 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • “We are victims of a campaign of arrests because we are an organization that has invested and contributed a lot to Hirak,” a member of RAJ’s executive board told Al-Monitor, speaking on the condition of anonymity following Fersaoui’s arrest. “Yet, RAJ is not the only target of these arbitrary arrests, but rather the civil society as a whole.”
  • an upsurge of repression against prominent leaders and other activists with Hirak, including large-scale arbitrary arrests
  • escalation is taking place two months before presidential elections called for Dec. 12 by the interim president, Abdelkader Bensalah, and pushed for by the army.
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  • The lawyers highlighted arrests outside the legal framework, abuse of pre-trial detention, the disproportionate concentration of detentions in Algiers and denying detainees the right to contact their family or a lawyer
  • Kaci Tansaout, CNLD coordinator, remarked to Al-Monitor, “Since Friday, Sept. 13, it is no longer ‘arrests’ but rather kidnappings of known and identified persons, either before a march or at the end of a sit-in in support of detainees.” 
  • According to the National Committee for the Liberation of the Detainees (CNLD), Algerian authorities detained at least 91 prisoners of conscience between June 21 and Oct. 15 in Algiers alone
  • detainees have mainly been arrested on the grounds of allegedly violating Articles 75, 79 and 96 of the penal code, respectively, undermining the morale of the army, undermining the integrity of the national territory and publishing content undermining the national interest
  • Many detainees have been arrested for carrying the Amazigh flag during protests and later accused of undermining the integrity of the national territory, a violation that carries a prison term of one to 10 years and a fine between 3,000 and 70,000 Algerian dinars ($25 to $600).
  • “At RAJ, we are directly affected by the arrests because we already have nine activists behind bars…, but those in jail always ask us to remain mobilized, keep up the struggle and not to worry about them. This is what gives us the courage and resolve [to persevere].” 
  • “After 34 weeks of massive popular protests throughout the country, the government is deploying a [broad] strategy to counteract the peaceful revolution, including intimidation and prevention of free movement, but also, and mainly, by the exploitation of the judiciary as a tool of repression,”
  • “Another manoeuver of the government to try to weaken or stop the popular movement is to exert pressure on the editorial offices of the public and private media, including over coverage of popular demonstrations.”
Ed Webb

Maltese PM's chief-of-staff arrested over journalist's murder - 0 views

www.telegraph.co.uk/...ff-arrested-journalists-murder

Malta corruption murder journalist politics crime

shared by Ed Webb on 29 Nov 19 - Cached
  • former chief of staff of Malta’s government was arrested over the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia on Wednesday as suspects reportedly began pointing the finger at each other and opposition MPs renewed calls for the prime minister to resign
  • Mr Schembri resigned after he was reportedly named as a “person of interest” in the investigation by Yorgen Fenech, a multi-millionaire businessman who was arrested last week as he tried to leave Malta on his luxury yacht. Both have denied any wrongdoing. 
  • Maltese police have not said why Mr Schembri is under arrest or whether he is a suspect in the murder, which shook the former British colony to the core and raised questions in Europe about the rule of law on the island
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  • Outside parliament, protesters have shouted “mafia” and “murderers” at the prime minister and his ministers, with some throwing eggs, coins and fake bank notes.
  • As the investigation deepened, the Maltese press reported that Mr Fenech’s doctor had also been arrested, accused of passing messages from Mr Schembri to Mr Fenech
  • Caruana Galizia, 53, whose well-read blog dished the dirt on politicians of all stripes, was killed by a car bomb as she drove away from her family home two years ago.
  • Mr Schembri was one of three senior figures in the prime minister’s circle to step down on Tuesday. The others were Konrad Mizzi, the tourism minister, and Chris Cardona, the economy minister, who has suspended himself pending the conclusion of the investigation.  
Ed Webb

Lebanon and Iraq Want to Overthrow Sectarianism - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...ants-to-overthrow-sectarianism

Iraq Lebanon protests sectarianism consociationalism Iran hezbollah

shared by Ed Webb on 02 Nov 19 - Cached
  • In Iraq, the protesters mostly consisted of angry young working-class men, and they were quickly confronted with violence. In Lebanon, meanwhile, the protests have been marked by that country’s unmistakable sense of style and festive spirit, and the initiators have mostly been from the upper social classes. In downtown Beirut this past weekend, the sea of protesters included a woman in white-rimmed retro sunglasses with her dog named Pucci and a young man waving a Lebanese flag while lying in an inflatable kiddie pool. Yet despite the stark contrast between the protests, the rebels in both countries are in fact very similar. They are confronting many of the same political problems and are making essentially the same demand. They want the downfall of their countries’ existing self-serving elites, and big changes to the sectarian constitutional systems that enabled them
  • if austerity measures were a trigger, the protesters now have much bigger complaints on their minds
  • Iraqi protesters share the Lebanese view of their ruling elite as corrupt and inefficient (although they have also learned their government is quicker to resort to violence to restore order)
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  • Politicians give whatever work there is to their henchmen, not to us
  • Many of the politicians in Lebanon and Iraq are the direct material beneficiaries of sectarian systems instituted after conflicts in both countries.
  • Wealth and national resources were carved up along sectarian lines, with no party having an interest in upsetting the status quo.
  • After the 2003 U.S. invasion, Iraq borrowed from Lebanon to build its own muhasasa taifa, or balanced sectarianism. Power is likewise shared between the ruling elite of Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. As a result, while elections can shift the balance of power, they do little to change the faces of those who wield it, from whichever sect or faction
  • many Lebanese feel that Hezbollah can no longer claim the moral ground it once claimed for itself as a political outsider, now that it’s clearly a part of the faulty system
  • one side of the protests is that they are against any political parties that are religious or ideologically charged
  • At least two generations of Iraqis have been scarred by sectarianism, beginning with Saddam Hussein’s killings of Shiites in Iraq, the subsequent revenge by the Shiite militias on Sunnis, and then the formation of the Islamic State. They are not just exhausted from the chaos unleashed by sectarian rivalries, but also disdainful of them. The most recent Iraqi protests were held mainly in Shiite cities and against a Shiite-dominated government.
  • In Lebanon, meanwhile, the protests comprise different sects, ages, sexes, and ideologies. However, perhaps most notable were the protests by Shiites in the south of the country against the Amal Movement, historically the dominant Shiite political party. The streets of Tyre resonated with curses aimed at Nabih Berri—Amal’s leader, the Shiite speaker of the parliament, and a Hezbollah ally.
  • In both countries, Shiite militias backed by Iran have come to play a dominant role in government in recent years: Hezbollah in Lebanon, and groups that belong to the Popular Mobilization Forces, the irregular army raised to fight the Islamic State, in Iraq
  • such division of power has reduced sectarian conflict but failed at making government efficient or transparent
  • In last year’s elections, a new movement of independent, nonsectarian “civil society” candidates stepped up, and though only one succeeded in winning a seat, amid claims they are too disparate and divided to succeed, they are still determined to try again
  • For now, however, the very act of protest offers a sense of possibility. “It’s very beautiful,” said Azab, “when you feel that you managed to defeat all your fears and say what you want out loud.”
Ed Webb

Human rights groups turn their sights on Trump's America - POLITICO - 0 views

www.politico.com/...human-rights-trump-us-346423

US USA human rights rights UN NGOs ICG diplomacy

shared by Ed Webb on 01 Jul 20 - Cached
  • international activists, groups and institutions are increasingly focusing on the United States as a villain, not a hero, on the subject of human rights. While the U.S. has never fully escaped such scrutiny — consider the post-9/11 fury over torture, Guantanamo Bay and drone strikes — former officials and activists say that, under President Donald Trump, American domestic strife is raising an unusual level of alarm alongside U.S. actions on the global stage. Some groups also flag what they say is an erosion of democracy in a country that has long styled itself as a beacon of freedom.
  • Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has created a commission tasked with rethinking the U.S. approach to human rights. Pompeo argues there’s been a questionable proliferation of what counts as human rights. Critics fear the commission, whose report is due this summer, will undercut the rights of women, LGBTQ people and others
  • “The Trump factor is huge, if not the determinative factor” in the battered U.S. reputation, said David Kramer, a former assistant secretary of State for human rights in the George W. Bush administration. “People advocating and fighting for democracy, human rights and freedom around the world are disillusioned by the U.S. government and don’t view the current administration as a true partner.”
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  • In early June, the International Crisis Group did something its leaders said was a historic first: It issued a statement on an internal crisis in the United States. The ICG, an independent organization headquartered in Belgium, analyzes geopolitics with the goal of preventing conflict. It is known for issuing authoritative, deeply sourced reports on war-torn countries — say, how to end the brutal conflict in Yemen.
  • In language similar to how it might describe fragile foreign states, the ICG cast the “unrest” as a crisis that “put the nation’s political divides on full display.” And it chided the Trump administration for “incendiary, panicky rhetoric that suggests the U.S. is in armed conflict with its own people.”
  • “Over the long term, the nation will need to take steps to end the police’s brutality and militarization as well as structural racial inequality if it wants to avoid similar future crises,” the ICG said.
  • The ICG decided it saw a confluence of factors in America that it sees in far more troubled countries. One appeared to be growing militarization of the police. Another was the seeming politicization of the military. Also key: Some U.S. political leaders, including Trump, seem determined to exploit racial divisions instead of pushing for unity. The ICG is now debating whether to launch a program that focuses on U.S. domestic issues in a systematic way
  • past U.S. administrations, Republican and Democrat, all had credibility gaps when it came to promoting human rights while protecting U.S. interests. Obama, for instance, was criticized for authorizing drone strikes against militants that often killed civilians
  • “I think there’s a qualitative difference with this administration, for whom human rights seems to be treated purely as a transactional currency,”
  • In 2019, Freedom House released a special essay titled “The Struggle Comes Home: Attacks on Democracy in the United States.” The Washington-based NGO, which receives the bulk of its funding from the U.S. government, was established in 1941 to fight fascism. Its report, which ranks how free countries are using various indicators, described a decline in U.S. democracy that predated Trump and was fueled in part by political polarization. Freedom House warned, however, that Trump was accelerating it.
  • Rights activists worry the panel will craft a “hierarchy” of rights that will undermine protections for women, LGBTQ people and others, while possibly elevating religious freedom above other rights
  • “There is intense racism and law enforcement abuse of human rights in China, in Russia, in Brazil and a lot of other countries that the United Nations has a hard time mustering the will to condemn,” said Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.), a former senior human rights official under Obama. “But none of those countries is the indispensable nation. What human rights organizations and institutions are saying by focusing on the United States is something that they cannot explicitly admit, and that is that they believe in American exceptionalism. They understand that America falling short of its ideals has a far greater impact on the world than a Russia or a China doing what we all expect those authoritarian states to do.”
  • A top State Department official, Brian Hook, later wrote a memo to Tillerson arguing that the U.S. should use human rights as a weapon against adversaries, like Iran and China. But repressive allies, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, should get a pass, it said. “Allies should be treated differently — and better — than adversaries. Otherwise, we end up with more adversaries, and fewer allies,” Hook wrote.
  • the memo appears to have laid out the policy approach the Trump administration has taken on human rights, even after Tillerson was fired in early 2018. His successor, Mike Pompeo, frequently weighs in on human rights but almost exclusively to bash governments hostile to the United States or, occasionally, ones with which the U.S. has limited strategic interest.
  • it sometimes goes to great lengths to protect abusive U.S partners, as it has done by pressing ahead with arms sales to Saudi Arabia despite its assassination of a writer for The Washington Post
  • “The current administration doesn’t think most of its supporters care about international violations of human rights broadly,”
  • The international furor against the Trump administration was especially intense in mid-2018, as the U.S. was separating migrant children from their parents at the southern border, then putting the children in detention camps. The U.N. high commissioner for human rights called the U.S. actions “unconscionable.”
  • Trump administration officials also say human rights activists are never satisfied, no matter who is in the White House. This is not an unfair argument: The groups routinely criticize even administrations most friendly to their cause. Bush was eviscerated over his handling of the war on terrorism, especially his decision to invade Iraq, even though he and his aides asserted that they were liberating and protecting people. Obama’s human rights legacy was declared “shaky.” For U.S. officials who must make choices between bad and worse options every day, the endless criticism is frustrating.
  • Pompeo’s disdain for the human rights community is one reason he created what’s known as the Commission on Unalienable Rights. The secretary asserts that activists keep trying to create categories of rights, and that “not everything good, or everything granted by a government, can be a universal right.”
  • Privately, administration officials say they do a lot of excellent human rights work that doesn’t get attention. They note that Congress has kept up funding for much of that work, even though Trump has tried to slash that funding. They also argue that the Trump team’s objectives and priorities are clearer than those of past administrations, especially when distinguishing friend from foe. While Obama tried to engage Tehran and Havana, the Trump administration casts those regimes as irredeemable, and it’s willing to attack them on human rights to weaken them. On the other hand, while Obama kept Hungary’s leader at a distance, Trump has welcomed him to the White House. Critics may see that as another example of Trump liking dictators, but his aides say it is a way to limit Russian and Chinese influence in Eastern Europe.
  • Human rights leaders say there are two noteworthy bright spots in the Trump administration’s record. It has put significant resources into promoting international religious freedom — routinely speaking out on the topic, holding annual ministerial gatherings about it, and launching an international coalition of countries to promote the ideal. A few weeks ago, Trump issued an executive order instructing Pompeo to further integrate the promotion of religious freedom in U.S. diplomacy. The administration also has used a relatively new legal tool, the Global Magnitsky Act, to impose economic sanctions on numerous individuals implicated in human rights abuses abroad. The sanctions have fallen on people ranging from Myanmar military officials suspected in the mass slaughter of Rohingya Muslims to an allegedly abusive Pakistani police official.
  • “In comparison to the remainder of its human rights record, the Trump administration’s use of the Global Magnitsky sanctions has exceeded expectations,”
  • The religious freedom alliance, for instance, includes countries such as Hungary, whose government the U.S. is trying to court but which traffics in anti-Semitic rhetoric. The religious freedom push also dovetails with a priority of Trump’s evangelical supporters, who have long pushed for greater protection of Christian communities overseas.
  • Under intense outside pressure, the administration imposed Magnitsky sanctions on more than a dozen Saudis for the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi; but it spared the man the U.S. intelligence community considers responsible for the killing, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom Trump has defended
  • The dire situation of Uighur Muslims in China illustrates how both the Magnitsky effort and the religious freedom effort have collided with Trump’s own priorities.
  • In recent years, the Chinese government has detained more than a million Uighur Muslims, putting them in camps from which ugly reports of abuse have emerged. China claims it is “reeducating” the Uighurs to stamp out terrorist thinking in the population. Republican and Democratic lawmakers in Congress are furious over the detention of the Uighurs.
  • Pompeo, meanwhile, has raised the Uighurs as an example of why the U.S. must promote religious freedom. But Trump has been unwilling to use the Magnitsky sanctions on Chinese officials involved in the mistreatment of the Uighurs. He told Axios he doesn't want to impose the penalties because it might derail trade talks with Beijing, the success of which he sees as critical to his reelection
  • Trump’s diatribes against journalists — and his claims that many legitimate media outlets are “fake news” — are believed to have inspired some countries to impose tougher laws curtailing press freedoms.
  • When the State Department spokesperson recently tweeted out criticism of Beijing’s treatment of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, a Chinese official tweeted back at her with some of Floyd’s last words: “I can’t breathe.”
  • In 2018, a U.N. envoy, Philip Alston, unveiled the findings of an investigation into poverty in the United States. Alston has said he was initially invited to study the topic under the Obama administration, but that the Trump administration — under Tillerson — had reextended the invite. Alston’s report minced few words. The United States, he reported, was home to tens of millions of people in poverty, and that was likely to be exacerbated by Trump’s economic policies.
  • Nikki Haley, then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, fought back. She called Alston’s work “misleading and politically motivated,” insisted that the Trump administration’s plans would lift people out of poverty, and argued that the U.N. should focus on poverty in less-developed countries.
  • The council instead requested a broader, more generic U.N. report on systemic racism and police brutality against Black people and also asked for information on how various governments worldwide deal with anti-racism protests. The resolution did, however, mention the Floyd death and the report is expected to cover the United States, among other countries.
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