cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/31223771

Archived

In January 2025, Memorial Human Rights Center members visited Ukraine and conducted the first monitoring mission by Russian observers since the start of the full-scale invasion. They visited the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Kherson, and Chernihiv regions, along with the cities of Poltava and Odesa. During the trip, Memorial’s team documented violations of international humanitarian law and war crimes committed by the Russian army. The group plans to present its findings later this spring. Meduza spoke with Memorial observer Vladimir Malykhin about what he saw in Ukraine and why the monitoring mission is crucial to improving our understanding of contemporary Russia.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/30805532

Archived

China scored 9 out of 100 and was rated “not free” in the Freedom in the World 2025 report by Freedom House, which ranked 195 countries and 13 territories on political rights and civil liberties for 2024.

"China’s authoritarian regime has become increasingly repressive in recent years. The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to tighten control over all aspects of life and governance, including the state bureaucracy, the media, online speech, religious practice, universities, businesses, and civil society associations," the report reads.

In Freedom House’s transnational repression report released in mid-February, China was named a major perpetrator of transnational repression in 2024. The Chinese regime has also been the “most prolific perpetrator” of transnational repression over the past decade, according to the NGO.

Chinese regime-controlled Hong Kong scored 40 points and was listed as a “partly free” territory. Taiwan continued to be rated “free,” with 94 points.

Hong Kong earned 9 points in political rights and 31 points in civil liberties, for a total score of 40 points. It dropped a point from last year to reach a new low of 40, down from 61 in 2017.

[...]

“The territory’s most prominent prodemocracy figures have been arrested under its provisions, and NSL charges or the threat of charges have resulted in the closure of political parties, major independent news outlets, peaceful nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and unions,” the summary reads.

Tibet under the CCP’s rule scored 0 points and continued to be listed as a “not free” territory. Specifically, Tibet received minus 2 points for “political rights” and 2 points for “civil liberties.”

Freedom House noted that “Tibet is ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government based in Beijing, with local decision-making power concentrated in the hands of Chinese party officials. Residents of both Han Chinese and Tibetan ethnicity are denied fundamental rights, and authorities are especially rigorous in suppressing any signs of dissent among Tibetans.”

The report did not separately assess freedom in the Xinjiang region, the Uyghur region ruled by the CCP.

[...]

Sun Kuo-Hsiang, professor of international affairs and business at Nanhua University in Taiwan, told The Epoch Times on Feb. 27 that Freedom House’s report is credible, as “it truthfully reflects the control model of China’s current political system, legal environment, and social system.”

He said the main reason for the lack of freedom is the political system in mainland China, which is a totalitarian model.

“From the perspective of democratic standards, there are no elections, no multiparty competition, and citizens have no real right to participate in politics,” Sun said.

In the short term, the situation in China will get worse, he said.

“With China’s expanding of its influence, especially in the global south [developing countries], those countries are facing the same situation,” Sun said.

[...]

The CCP’s attitude toward overseas dissidents will not change either, he noted.

“It will only intensify overseas surveillance, cyberattacks, espionage, and other transnational repression activities to suppress them,” he said.

In the long run, the CCP’s transnational repression may backfire on China’s global influence. According to Sun, it may “weaken China’s soft power, and cause more countries to take precautionary measures against China.”

[...]

He suggested that Western countries strengthen their precautions against the CCP’s export of its totalitarianism and transnational repression by “restricting the CCP setting up institutions in their countries … paying special attention to the institutions established by the CCP, providing political asylum to Chinese people, and legislating to protect dissidents.”

Lai said everyone who has lived in China can relate to the political life reflected in the freedom index.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/30756587

As of this year, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) - [which plays a crucial role in sustainable development with over 7,300 projects across three continents] - will start implementing its updated Environmental and Social Policy and Access to Information Policy. These policies set the EBRD’s environmental, social, and human rights standards, as well as obligations for its public and private sector clients. Feedback from civil society organisations like Bankwatch, project-affected communities, and institutions such as the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has led to significant improvements in transparency, stakeholder engagement, and human rights due diligence. However, accountability gaps remain.

One of the most significant improvements is the EBRD’s commitment to greater transparency. The EBRD will now proactively disclose environmental and social information, reducing barriers for stakeholders seeking access. Additionally, it has introduced a public interest override to prioritise transparency over non-disclosure commitments when necessary.

[...]

In the past, public transport projects in Sarajevo and Tbilisi lacked transparency, excluding citizens from decision-making. [...] As a result, concerns raised by women and other vulnerable groups regarding routes, security, and accessibility were overlooked. The new transparency commitments should help prevent such oversights.

[...]

The new policies require financial intermediary banks to establish grievance mechanisms, disclose their environmental and social management systems, and report on implementation. This is a step forward, but it remains unclear how affected individuals will be informed of their rights and access to the EBRD accountability mechanisms when needed.

[...]

Another improvement is a new EBRD commitment to disclose the amounts and sources of technical assistance funding and grant financing. It also lowers the threshold for publishing project summaries for grant-funded activities not tied to specific projects. However, without a requirement to disclose outcomes, accountability remains weak, especially for public-sector initiatives.

For example, in the Karaganda WWTP Modernisation project in Kazakhstan, the EBRD allocated over EUR 1 million in technical assistance for a feasibility study and environmental and social impact assessment. Civil society groups raised concerns that the proposed plant might not meet the growing population’s needs or address water losses from outdated infrastructure. However, a lack of public access to the feasibility study undermined consultation efforts and limited the project’s potential benefits for essential infrastructure development.

[...]

For the first time, the EBRD has formally recognised human rights as a core element of project assessment and management. The updated Environmental and Social Policy requires projects to factor in governance risks, civic space restrictions, and stakeholder concerns, ensuring a more context-specific approach to risk management.

For instance, the EBRD will now have to consider risks posed by laws restricting civil society in Kyrgyzstan and Georgia, the criminalisation of LGBTIQ+ people in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, media censorship in Azerbaijan and Tajikistan, and the absence of civil liberties in Egypt and Turkey. These risks should inform project categorisation, impact assessments, mitigation measures, and monitoring and accountability frameworks.

Another notable step forward is the EBRD’s commitment to assessing retaliation risks and working with clients to prevent reprisals against project-affected people, a provision that the Environmental and Social Policy had previously overlooked. It now introduces requirements for clients to develop relevant policies and ensure stakeholder engagement is free from harassment and reprisals. However, given that the clients themselves are often responsible for these acts of retaliation, the EBRD must first and foremost strengthen its own due diligence processes to hold clients accountable whenever these risks arise.

[...]

Additionally, the Environmental and Social Policy mandates assessments of digitalisation risks and supply-chain impacts, which are particularly relevant given the EBRD’s focus on green investment. The policy’s commitment to using sex-disaggregated data to capture gender-specific impacts is another welcome development.

[...]

Civil society has long criticised the EBRD’s reliance on client-provided information and its consistent lack of independent verification. The new policy requires the EBRD to integrate stakeholder perspectives into risk assessments and enhance external validation of reported data.

For projects with significant community impacts, the EBRD may now conduct its own stakeholder consultations before approval, adding a layer of accountability. However, simply considering the views of stakeholders is not enough. The EBRD must also proactively seek out their opinions, particularly in countries with democratic deficits. For instance, the problematic Amulsar gold mine and Indorama Agro cotton projects, both backed by the EBRD, show how things can go badly wrong when the views of stakeholders are ignored and the early warnings of civil society organisations are not heeded.

[...]

Additionally, the new requirement for trade union consultations means the EBRD must foster an environment where independent workers’ organisations can thrive without undue influence from the client. As a case in point, the replacement of a democratically elected union with a less representative coalition on the Indorama Agro project in Uzbekistan illustrates the risks of failing to ensure these enabling conditions are met.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/30750704

Today, March 10, 2025, Tibetans worldwide commemorate the 1959 uprising in Tibet.

After nearly 70 years of repressive Chinese state rule, government policies that seek to forcibly assimilate non-Han peoples in China under President Xi Jinping represent an alarming turn for the worse for Tibetans.

While the Chinese government’s crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang received global attention, the slow drip of news about its intensifying repression against Tibetans has garnered less notice due to ever more intrusive and watertight policing, surveillance, and censorship in Tibetan areas.

In Tibet, there is no independent civil society, freedom of expression, association, assembly, or religion. Under the pretext of national policing campaigns such as “the anti-gang crime crackdown” and the “anti-fraud” crackdown, the Chinese government has decimated what little Tibetan civil society remained, shut down Tibetan websites that promote Tibetan language and culture, and closed privately funded schools; even those that followed the government-approved curriculum.

Tibetans are told how to live their lives: use Mandarin Chinese as the medium of instruction in schools, relocate en masse from their long-established villages to new government-built and managed settlements, silently witness their rivers being dammed to generate electricity for large-scale mining or to power regions far away in China. Any questioning of government policies, however mild, can result in arbitrary detention, enforced disappearance, torture, and long-term imprisonment.

[...]

Governments that profess support for the human rights of Tibetans should step up their assistance to Tibetan groups worldwide that document rights and report on abuses in Tibet, advocate in international forums, and seek to preserve Tibetan identity and culture.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2134965

Archived

** "If the whole world could hear me, I would say that we need to win this war as soon as possible so that all children can see their families again..." - Those words come from 12-year-old Sashko from the southeast Ukrainian city of Mariupol, who was separated from his mother by Russians during the so-called "filtration" procedure in the Donetsk region.**

Sashko is one of the thousands of children taken to the Russian Federation from the occupied regions of Ukraine under the guise of evacuation and ensuing rehabilitation ,to teach them to "love Russia."

On March 17, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights in Russia, Maria Lvova-Belova. They are suspected of facilitating the forced deportation of children from the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories, violating the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

[...]

**How Russian "filtration" works **

Last spring, Sashko was cooking with his mother Snizhana over a fire in partially occupied Mariupol. The shelling started, they did not have time to run to the shelter, and a piece of shrapnel hit the boy in the eye. In search of medical care, his mother took him to the Ilyich steel plant, where Ukrainian military doctors treated the wounded.

The Russian military took the boy's mother for re-interrogation. He never saw her again.

But later, the occupiers took them prisoner and sent them to a filtration camp in Donetsk Oblast. There, Sashko and his mother were met by representatives of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations and registered. After that, the Russian military took the boy's mother, to interrogate her further. He never saw her again.

Sashko was held in the "republican trauma center" for two months until he found a way to call his grandmother, who eventually managed to take him away.

Doctors now say that Sashko won't be able to out of his injured eye. The fate of Sashko's mother, Snizhana, is still unknown.

[...]

Rhetorics such as "your parents don't need you" and "you don't have a future in Ukraine" is one of the propaganda methods used by Russians with Ukrainian children living in Russian-occupied regions, or who have been taken to Russia.

"They say that Ukraine has abandoned you; they teach you to hate your parents, then your country, and then to love Russia," says lawyer Myroslava Kharchenko.

[...]

"Whenever they played the Russian anthem, we would put on our headphones and listen to the Ukrainian anthem," says 16-year-old Vitaliy, who was sent to a camp in Crimea last fall.

"On New Year's Eve, we had to watch Putin's address, and some of us left the room and started shouting 'Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!" says Taisiya, 16 too. She says that children who disobeyed their teachers were locked up for several days in an "isolation room."

[...]

"On some of the Ukrainian territories, children have lived under Russian propaganda for eight years. They are taught to see Ukraine as an enemy," says Aksana Filipishyna. Such measures can contribute to the fact that, in a few years, these children will end up hating their homeland. Like, for example, this 20-year-old soldier I met at one of the checkpoints in occupied Donetsk last fall. He was born there. When the war started in 2014, he was 11 years old, almost like Sashko from Mariupol. Now he is convinced that he is fighting for his homeland and against the Nazis. He grew up on Russian propaganda.

[...]

Cross posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/30703914

Archived

The Italian government approved a draft law that for the first time introduces the legal definition of femicide in the country’s criminal law and punishes it with life imprisonment.

The move, announced on the eve of International Women’s Day on Saturday, aims at tackling a shocking string of killings and violence targeting women in Italy through strengthening measures against gender-based crimes like stalking and revenge porn.

The proposal, agreed on late Friday, still needs to go through parliament and must be approved by both chambers to become law.

“This is an extremely significant bill, which introduces the crime of femicide in our legal system as an autonomous crime, punishing it with life imprisonment,” said conservative Premier Giorgia Meloni, who strongly backed the initiative.

“It introduces aggravating circumstances and increases sentences for crimes including personal mistreatment, stalking, sexual violence and revenge porn,” she said in a statement.

[...]

Cross posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/30697680

Archived

Feminism is still a dirty word in China: Organised feminist activism is nearly impossible in the country in 2025, but Chinese women are still talking

https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/feminism-still-dirty-word-china

In March 2015, Beijing police arrested and detained a group of young women planning to hand out stickers on the subway on International Women’s Day opposing sexual harassment. They were jailed for more than a month, received “criminal suspect” status, and remain under surveillance today. These women became known as the Feminist Five.

Ten years later, and people are still talking about what happened.

[...]

China has dropped 37 ranks in the Global Gender Gap Index – run by the World Economic Forum of which China is an advocate – since Xi Jinping became Communist Party General Secretary in 2012. The Communist Party diminishes the role of women in public office. For the first time in decades, there is not one woman among the 24 Politburo members, China’s executive policymaking body. Party spokespeople often encourage more traditional roles for women – as caretakers and mothers – to address an ageing population. And the Party has made it harder for women to organise or advocate for themselves in China, using online censorship and the 2017 Overseas NGO Law to stifle dissent among civil society.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2094988

• Before the British government handed over Hong Kong in 1997, China agreed to allow the region considerable political autonomy for fifty years under a framework known as “one country, two systems.”
• In recent years, Beijing has cracked down on Hong Kong’s freedoms, stoking mass protests in the city and drawing international criticism.
• Beijing imposed a national security law in 2020 that gave it broad new powers to punish critics and silence dissenters, which has fundamentally altered life for Hong Kongers.

Archived

China pledged to preserve much of what makes Hong Kong unique when the former British colony was handed over in 1997. Beijing said it would give Hong Kong fifty years to keep its capitalist system and enjoy many freedoms not found in mainland Chinese cities.

But more than halfway through the transition, Beijing has taken increasingly brazen steps to encroach on Hong Kong’s political system and crack down on dissent. In 2020, Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong. Since then, authorities have arrested dozens of pro-democracy activists, lawmakers, and journalists; curbed voting rights; and limited freedoms of the press and speech. In March 2024, Hong Kong lawmakers passed Article 23, an additional security legislation that further cements China’s rule on the city’s rights and freedom. These moves have not only drawn international condemnation, but have also raised questions about Hong Kong’s status as a global financial hub and dimmed hopes that the city will ever become a full-fledged democracy.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/30410703

New data released by the Chinese Communist Party's internal policing body shows a major 46.15% increase in the use of the Liuzhi system from 2023 to 2024. Over the course of last year, 38,000 people were detained by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI).

Liuzhi, or retention in custody, is very similar in design to the better-known residential surveillance at a designated location system (RSDL), which is traditionally used against lawyers, rights defenders and dissidents.

Both systems consist of incommunicado detentions in solitary confinement at secret locations for a period of up to six months.

Unlike RSDL however, the Liuzhi system resides entirely outside the legal system and is treated as an internal party matter (even though many of its victims are likely not party members). In Liuzhi, one does not even theoretically have a right to legal counsel.

For more information on CCDI, Liuzhi and related issues, see our longer report on this (16 Dec 2024).

Key findings from the latest report on the use of Liuzhi:

• The number of investigations of “discipline violations” rose from 626,000 in 2023 to 877,000 in 2024, an increase of 40.09%.

• The number of people placed into Liuzhi rose from 26,000 in 2023 to 38,000 in 2024, an increase of 46.15%.

• Based on the above, the use of Liuzhi, the harshest form of investigation, rose not only in total number of instances used, but also relative to all investigations: 4.15% of those investigated placed into Liuzhi 2023, and 4.33% of those investigated placed into Liuzhi 2024.

• Of the 889,000 people given disciplinary sanctions of any sort, 17,000 regarded people in the financial sector, 94,000 within State-Owned Enterprises, and 60,000 people within the pharmaceutical sector.

• The** total number of victims since the system was implemented in 2018 is now likely close to - or slightly above - 200,000**. All are victims of the CCDI’s systematic and widespread use of arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances and torture (due to the prolonged use of solitary confinement).

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2078708

The Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide released a report in January 2025, “Eight Years On, China’s Repression of the Uyghurs Remains Dire: How China’s Policies in the Uyghur Region Have and Have Not Changed.” The report is authored by Rian Thum, Senior Lecturer in East Asian History, at the University of Manchester.

[...]

The [new] report finds that, given the available information, all of the policies that led to accusations of mass atrocities in the Uyghur region continue, and some are expanding. These findings should prompt deeper research into the nature of mass atrocities facing the Uyghur population and spark urgent, effective responses. In particular, the report recommends further research into emerging repressive strategies, including the intense network of electronic and human surveillance, curbs on religious practice, and the destruction of cultural heritage.

[...]

A list of boarding schools (pdf) newly built or expanded with new dormitories in 2023 and 2024. The sources are Chinese government construction tenders (formal requests for bids from contractors on a project) and state-approved media, with links to the sources provided in the table. Some of the sites are geolocated by comparison using details from the tender or media sources.

A list of prisons and kanshousuo (pdf), a type of internment facility, that have either been newly built or expanded from 2019 onward. Geolocation (associating names of documented facilities to exact coordinates) is based on the work and available sources on the Xinjiang Victims Database. Expansion and new construction dates are based on data satellite imagery, in most cases from Google Earth.

Using the list of kanshousuo identified by Xinjiang Victims Database from satellite imagery and government documents, this spreadsheet (pdf) provides an estimate of total kanshousuo capacity in Xinjiang at Chinese government standards. Government standards, available at Archive Today, dictate cell capacity of eight or 16 prisoners for the two standard cell sizes. Cell sizes and numbers were identified from the unroofed outdoor section that is mandated for each cell and is visible in satellite imagery. Google Earth and Apple Maps were the sources for satellite imagery.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/30223092

Tibetans have worked to protect the Tibetan language and resisted efforts to enforce Mandarin Chinese. Yet, Tibetan children are losing their language through enrolment in state boarding schools where they are being educated nearly exclusively in Mandarin Chinese. Tibetan is typically only taught a few times a week – not enough to sustain the language.

[...]

[Beijing's] Government policy forces all Tibetans to learn and use Mandarin Chinese. Those who speak only Tibetan have a harder time finding work and are faced with discrimination and even violence from the dominant Han ethnic group.

[...]

Meanwhile, support for Tibetan language education has slowly been whittled away: the government even recently banned students from having private Tibetan lessons or tutors on their school holidays.

Linguistic minorities in Tibet all need to learn and use Mandarin. But many also need to learn Tibetan to communicate with other Tibetans: classmates, teachers, doctors, bureaucrats or bosses.

[...]

The government refuses to provide any opportunities to use and learn minority languages like Manegacha. It also tolerates constant discrimination and violence against Manegacha speakers by other Tibetans.

These [Chinese] assimilationist state policies are causing linguistic diversity across Tibet to collapse. As these minority languages are lost, people’s mental and physical health suffers and their social connections and communal identities are destroyed.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2050069

Here is the article as pdf.

Drawing on the author’s own experience, this paper explores the rarely researched experience of sibling abortion under China’s One-Child Policy [1979 and 2015] through a psychodynamic lens.

The author uses writing as a method of inquiry to delve into the emotional impact of losing a younger brother to abortion due to the One-Child Policy and to dialogue with relevant psychodynamic literature on loss and grief.

The main body of this paper consists of three separate yet interrelated sections.

• In the first section, drawing on the concept of The Dead Mother, the author explores the possible impact of her mother’s bereavement of a second child on the author’s emotional life in her formative years.

• The second section draws on psychodynamic literature on melancholia to understand how the lost life of an aborted brother is kept alive in the author’s psyche and the ambivalence this brings to the author’s psychical world.

• The third section is an analysis of the first two sections, constructing an understanding of the missing psychosocial elements in the first two sections.

This paper gives voice to the longing and mourning brought by sibling abortion under China's One-Child Policy, presenting the author’s process of trying to understand such experiences and attempt to understand the personal and the psychical under the influence of the political.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/30111516

[...]

The punishment had “no place” in the 21st century, [UN human rights chief Volker] Türk, continued, noting that “the top executing countries over recent years" include Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and the United States.

[...]

Latest UN data indicates that in 2023, 1,153 executions took place in 16 countries, representing a 31 per cent increase from 2022 and the highest number in the past eight years.

“That followed a 53 per cent increase in executions between 2021 and 2022,” the High Commissioner said, adding that the figures do not take into account China, “where there is a lack of transparent information and statistics on the death penalty. I call on the Chinese authorities to change this policy and join the trend towards abolition.”

[...]

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2035432

Archived

In the three years since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, more than 20,000 people in Russia have been detained for their anti-war stance, according to figures released by the independent human rights organization OVD-Info.

In 2022 alone, over 18,900 people were detained during public anti-war protests against military actions and mobilization — the mass conscription of men into Russia’s armed forces announced by Vladimir Putin in September that year.

In 2023, Russian security forces detained an additional 274 individuals, followed by 41 more in 2024. Over the same period, there were 856 instances of detentions linked to the public display of anti-war symbols.

Some Russians have been detained multiple times. These include 79-year-old St. Petersburg artist Elena Osipova, who has repeatedly staged solo protests against the war in her hometown.

In certain cases, activists have faced additional pressure from the state following their detention. For example, at the end of 2023, officers from the Center for Combating Extremism (also known as Center “E”) detained activist Dmitry Kuzmin, who had already been expelled twice from university for his anti-war stance. After his arrest, police attempted to serve him a military draft notice while he was in custody at the police station.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2035145

Safeguard Defenders [a NGO focused on human rights in China] is releasing its new handbook ‘Missing in China’ today in response to the growing number of foreign citizens arbitrarily detained in the authoritarian country.

The handbook is a combination of the organization’s extensive research in China’s repressive judicial system and the first-hand experiences of former detainees and their families. It offers readers with crucial insights and practical advice to deal with the detention of a loved one in China and aims to help them become the best possible advocates for their family member.

‘Missing in China’ is available to download here in English, Chinese and Japanese.

It includes information on what to expect from China’s law enforcement and judicial processes, how to retain a lawyer, how your country and consular services can assist, ways to engage with media and other possible allies, as well as other practical information.

While the majority of detentions of foreigners in China go unreported, some of the names that have made the news since 2018 include American Jeff Harper (2020); Australians Yang Hengjun (2019 to present) and Cheng Lei (2020 to 2023); Briton Ian Stones (likely 2018 to 2024); Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor (2018 to 2021); and Japanese Iwatani Nobu (2019).

In recent years, China has amended its counter-espionage and state secrets laws, markedly expanding both the scope of activities considered illegal and the ambiguity surrounding their interpretation. China has used these laws to target more than a dozen Japanese nationals and, for the first time last year, a South Korean worker in the country.

The authoritarian practice of using foreign citizens as bargaining chips in international relations became of such concern that Canada launched the Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State Relations on 15 February 2021. As of February 2025, 80 countries have signed on to the Declaration.

Yet, at the same time, those same nations often fail to provide adequate warnings to their citizens. While China was clearly on their minds when the Declaration against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State Relations was drafted, most of the signatory country’s travel advisories do not reflect such a risk assessment.

Authoritarian repression of the media is supported by the findings of the 2023 Global Organized Crime Index, which point to a trend of governments suppressing dissent, opposition and media freedom. Of the 12 resilience indicators measured by the Index, the ‘non-state actors’ indicator (which quantifies the role of civil society, including the media, as an alternative source of resilience to organized crime) declined the most globally, by 0.16 points.

In Asia, this indicator not only had the lowest average score of the five continents (3.72 out of 10), but also experienced the largest decline since 2021. Six of the world’s 11 lowest-scoring countries for non-state actors were in Asia, including Afghanistan (1.0), North Korea (1.0), Vietnam and Myanmar (both 1.50). These countries also scored low on ‘government transparency and accountability’.

More surprisingly, Oceania is beginning to show signs of this trend. Although the Oceania countries covered by the Press Freedom Index are all described as having a ‘satisfactory’ press freedom situation, Papua New Guinea was observed to have a ‘problematic’ situation and identified as having the largest decline in Oceania since 2023. Papua New Guinea also ranked highest in Oceania for criminality (5.72) and lowest for overall resilience (3.29) and non-state actors (2.5) under the Organized Crime Index. This suggests that whereas Oceania’s overall criminality score is well below that of all other world regions, media freedom is nevertheless under threat there.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2005305

This is an op-ed by Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, and a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

As Trump empowers Russia and the far right, he is laying the foundation for undermining democracies around the world.

Since the end of the second world war, liberal democracies have stuck together – led by the US. On the opposite side have been authoritarian states, led mainly by the Soviet Union, followed, after the demise of the Soviet Union, by Russia and China.

But all this is rapidly changing. Russia and China have morphed into oligarchies, run by small groups of extraordinarily wealthy people.

The US has been moving from a democracy to an oligarchy as well – and is doing so at lightning speed under Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/29861224

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), its member organisation Vietnam Committee on Human Rights (VCHR), Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), and Global Witness lodged a complaint with the European Commission’s trade department, stating that Hanoi’s ongoing crackdown on human rights defenders working on sustainable development violates the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA).

In a complaint filed [...] to the European Commission’s Single Entry Point, FIDH, VCHR, CSW, and Global Witness outlined how the Vietnamese government’s systematic suppression of individuals and organisations working on sustainable development violates EVFTA, which came into force in August 2020.

"The government of Vietnam is imprisoning individuals who express legitimate concerns on environmental protection, labour and land rights violations, and the socio-economic impacts of infrastructure and investment projects. This crackdown is unacceptable and also undermines effective monitoring of the EVFTA’s sustainable development clauses", said Gaëlle Dusepulchre, Deputy Director of FIDH’s Business, Human Rights & Environment Desk.

[...]

A feature of modern EU trade agreements, trade and sustainable development chapters require partners to ratify and implement fundamental international labour rights and environmental conventions, and to commit to upholding civil society participation, freedom of association, and access to information.

[...]

"The EU needs to be firmer in insisting that states uphold the commitments and obligations they have made in their trade arrangements with the EU – in the case of Vietnam, this includes those listed in the EVFTA’s Trade and Sustainable Development chapter. Pursuing adherence to these terms is in line with both the interests and the values of the EU, including human rights – at a time when these are gravely under threat", said Jonathan de Leyser, CSW’s Senior EU Advocate.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/29448107

Archived

In the beginning of February 2020, Chinese journalist Zhang Zhan heard rumours that an unidentified disease was killing citizens in the city of Wuhan. Despite the risk of contagion, she travelled 850 km to cover the situation on the ground, working in the epicentre of what turned out to be one of the deadliest pandemics in modern history. For this, she was sentenced to four years in prison as the Chinese regime tried to cover up news about the outbreak and their responsibility for the spread of the disease.

Five years later — after completing her first, unjust prison sentence — Zhang Zhan is in detention once again, arrested just a few weeks after sharing information about the harassment of human rights activists on social media. She has now been behind bars since August 2024 and recently started a hunger strike in protest of her mistreatment by the regime. According to RSF information, Zhang Zhan — who was already very weak prior herpast six months of detention — is being force-fed by prison authorities.

...

Throughout her imprisonment, RSF campaigned for her release and warned about the mistreatment she was subjected to in prison. During her early months of detention, Zhang Zhan — laureate of the 2021 RSF Press Freedom Award — nearly died after going on a total hunger strike to protest her mistreatment. Prison officials forcibly fed her through a nasal tube and sometimes left her handcuffed for days.

China, the world’s biggest prison for journalists and press freedom defenders with at least 124 media workers currently behind bars, is ranked 172nd out of 180 countries in the RSF 2024 World Press Freedom Index.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/1935030

Here is the link to the study.

A quarter of the world’s countries have engaged in transnational repression – targeting political exiles abroad to silence dissent – in the past decade, new research reveals.

The Washington DC-based non-profit organisation Freedom House has documented 1,219 incidents carried out by 48 governments across 103 countries, from 2014 to 2024.

However, a smaller number of countries account for the vast majority of all documented physical attacks on dissidents, with China the most frequent offender, responsible for 272 incidents, or 22% of recorded cases. Russia, Turkey and Egypt also rank among the worst perpetrators.

High-profile incidents of transnational repression include the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by a hit squad at Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has targeted his foes in the UK, including the 2006 radiation poisoning of the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko. This was followed by a string of more than a dozen other suspicious deaths of Russians on British soil that are also suspected of being tied to the Kremlin.

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cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/1928226

Archived

As China aggressively expands its economic footprint across the globe, the recent scandal at BYD's Brazilian factory construction site has exposed the darker side of Chinese overseas investment. The discovery of 163 Chinese workers living in "slavery-like conditions" in Camaçari, Brazil, reveals how China's corporations are exporting not just their products and services, but also their oppressive labor practices beyond their borders. The details that emerged from the Brazilian labor inspector's investigation paint a disturbing picture of systematic exploitation. Workers building BYD's electric vehicle factory were forced to surrender their passports, which is a classic indicator of forced labor and submit to contracts laden with draconian conditions. These included an $890 deposit that could only be retrieved after six months of work, effectively trapping workers in their positions, and arbitrary fines for infractions as minor as walking shirtless or engaging in arguments.

[...]

More revealing still are the discussions that emerged on Chinese social media platform Weibo, where some users noted that the conditions found in Brazil mirror those faced by construction workers within China itself. This acknowledgment hints at how China's domestic labor practices, characterized by the notorious "996" work culture (9 AM to 9 PM, six days a week), are being internationalized through its corporate expansion. The BYD Brazil scandal serves as a warning about the hidden costs of Chinese investment. While countries like Brazil eagerly court Chinese capital as part of their industrialization strategies, they must be vigilant about the potential for labor exploitation. The incident has already prompted Brazilian authorities to suspend temporary work visas for BYD, but more systematic safeguards are needed.

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This case also highlights the tension between economic development and worker rights. The BYD factory, built on the site of a former Ford plant, was supposed to symbolize Brazil's reindustrialization. Instead, it has become a symbol of how Chinese investment can undermine rather than enhance labor standards.

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cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/1891393

Archived

Avaaz is backing the call to the UN human rights chief from a coalition of activists fighting for Tibetan rights led by:

• International Tibet Network
• Students for a Free Tibet
• Tibet Action Institute
• Tibet Justice Center
• Tibetan Youth Association Europe

Three out of four.

That’s how many children China is forcing into boarding schools in Tibet, where they face abuse and are indoctrinated until they no longer speak the same language as their parents.

Many of these children often spend weeks or even months without seeing their parents, who say they’re simply not allowed to visit. Cut off from home, Tibetan children are only taught Mandarin and the love of the Chinese Communist Party, until their culture and religion is erased.

Now China is trying to cover it up while rooting out Tibetan culture for 1 million children. That’s where we come in.

Reporters just exposed the scandal thanks to brave Tibetan experts and teachers – and a UN investigation could force the truth of China’s indoctrination schools into broad daylight. Tibetan activists want to bring this call to the UN rights chief in days, before he addresses the Human Rights Council – and a big petition will get his attention! Sign and share now.

Just started reading this book by J. McKenzie Alexander, Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at London School of Economics (LSE), which is free to download as ePub, Mobi, and pdf.

Nearly 80 years ago, Karl Popper gave a spirited philosophical defence of the Open Society in his two-volume work, The Open Society and Its Enemies. In this book, J. McKenzie Alexander argues that a new defence is urgently needed because, in the decades since the end of the Cold War, many of the values of the Open Society have come under threat once again. Populist agendas on both the left and right threaten to undermine fundamental principles that underpin liberal democracies, so that what were previously seen as virtues of the Open Society are now, by many people, seen as vices, dangers, or threats.

The Open Society as an Enemy interrogates four interconnected aspects of the Open Society: cosmopolitanism, transparency, the free exchange of ideas, and communitarianism. Each of these is analysed in depth, drawing out the implications for contemporary social questions such as the free movement of people, the erosion of privacy, no-platforming and the increased political and social polarisation that is fuelled by social media.

In re-examining the consequences for all of us of these attacks on free societies, Alexander calls for resistance to the forces of reaction. But he also calls for the concept of the Open Society to be rehabilitated and advanced. In doing this, he argues, there is an opportunity to re-think the kind of society we want to create, and to ensure it is achievable and sustainable. This forensic defence of the core principles of the Open Society is an essential read for anyone wishing to understand some of the powerful social currents that have engulfed public debates in recent years, and what to do about them.

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Ukraine cooperates with the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and other organizations to ensure POWs receive humane treatment in line with international humanitarian standards. Authorities should continue to uphold these protections and undertake not to forcibly repatriate POWs to countries like North Korea, when they face a real risk of serious rights violations. This aligns with the principle of nonrefoulement, which prohibits repatriating individuals to countries where they risk persecution or torture.

Ukraine and governments around the world should ensure these soldiers are informed of their rights, treated with dignity, and protected from forced repatriation if they face serious rights violations, in alignment with the principles of international humanitarian and human rights law.