Derechos Humanos

MundoAsia,

Depuis sa fondation en 1949, la République populaire de Chine a cherché à renforcer son contrôle sur les régions périphériques et historiquement non-chinoises, telles que le Tibet, et le cas moins médiatisé du Turkestan oriental.

Au cours des dernières décennies, pour asseoir son autorité, le régime chinois n’a pas hésité à recourir à divers moyens économiques, politiques, mais aussi à la force et à l’encouragement à l’installation – voire à l’envoi direct et programmé – de populations han (chinois ethniques) dans ces périphéries pour mieux les arrimer à son territoire national.

Dans ces régions qui possèdent langues, cultures et organisations sociales et politiques propres, le mécontentement vis-à-vis des politiques imposées par l’Etat chinois et le questionnement de la légitimité de son autorité se manifestent continuellement jusqu’à aujourd’hui.…  Seguir leyendo »

Newly displaced Syrian children arrive at a refugee camp in the village of Atimah, in Syria’s Idlib province, on Sept. 11. (Khalil Ashawi/Reuters)

ReflexionesSocial,

Violent attacks by local populations against refugee populations are depressingly common across the globe. In August, demonstrators in the Brazilian border town of Pacaraima attacked refugees from neighboring Venezuela. The rioters destroyed a provisional refugee camp and forced an estimated 1,200 Venezuelans to flee back across the border.

Meanwhile, more than 1.5 million Venezuelans have been displaced to neighboring countries by the worsening crisis, and similar reports of violence by locals against the refugees abound.

And Syrian refugees have suffered extensive harassment in Lebanon, with deliberate efforts to clear refugees from specific areas, while many Rohingya from Myanmar have been targeted in India.…  Seguir leyendo »

Raj K Raj/Hindustan Times via Getty Images A farmers’ protest march in New Delhi, India, July 20, 2018

MundoAsia,

Last Thursday’s morning papers in India settled something that we have been debating for a while. A front-page report about the arrests of five political activists in The Indian Express read, “Those held part of anti-fascist plot to overthrow govt, Pune police tell court.” We should know by now that we are up against a regime that its own police calls fascist. In the India of today, to belong to a minority is a crime. To be murdered is a crime. To be lynched is a crime. To be poor is a crime. To defend the poor is to plot to overthrow the government.…  Seguir leyendo »

Algunas de las atrocidades han sido captadas en video. Credit Matthew F. Smith, Taimoor Sobhan y Japhet Weeks

MundoAsia, ,

Este documental de opinión revela imágenes impactantes que han recopilado los refugiados rohinyá sobre el genocidio que se lleva a cabo en Birmania.

La única manera en la que la comunidad internacional hará lo correcto es si los responsables son procesados por estos delitos y es sabido que Birmania no es ni capaz ni está dispuesta a asegurar que se haya justicia a nivel doméstico. La situación es justamente una de las razones por las cuales existe la Corte Penal Internacional (CPI).

El Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU no debe perder más tiempo; debe aprobar una resolución que refiera la situación birmana a la CPI y, ya que eso suceda, los procuradores podrán empezar a armar el caso.…  Seguir leyendo »

El 26 de julio de 2018 se organizó una manifestación en Managua para conmemorar los cien días de protestas ciudadanas contra el gobierno de Daniel Ortega en Nicaragua. Credit Marvin Recinos/AFP — Getty Images

MundoAmérica Latina y Caribe, ,

El presidente Daniel Ortega logró imponer su voluntad y aplastar las protestas mediante el terror. Desde que los manifestantes levantaran barricadas en todo el país, lo que inicialmente era una represión brutal se transformó en una cacería indiscriminada. Policías y pandillas “parapoliciales” han detenido arbitrariamente, secuestrado y desaparecido a decenas de personas.

En la década de 1980, la comunidad internacional adoptó el término “desaparición forzada” para los casos en que las autoridades o grupos que actúan con su connivencia privan de libertad a una persona y se niegan a reconocer que fue detenida o a informar su paradero o destino. La definición legal se creó, en parte, como respuesta a las dictaduras militares que utilizaron secuestros masivos para sembrar el terror en Argentina y Chile.…  Seguir leyendo »

Andrei Sakharov in Moscow in 1973.CreditAssociated Press

ReflexionesTestimonios,

Fifty years ago this Sunday, this paper devoted three broadsheet pages to an essay that had been circulating secretly in the Soviet Union for weeks. The manifesto, written by Andrei Sakharov, championed an essential idea at grave risk today: that those of us lucky enough to live in open societies should fight for the freedom of those born into closed ones. This radical argument changed the course of history.

Sakharov’s essay carried a mild title — “Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom” — but it was explosive. “Freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of mankind by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorships,” he wrote.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia,

Lorsque le 18 juin, la Thaïlande a procédé à sa première exécution après un moratoire de neuf ans, les réactions internationales varièrent de la consternation silencieuse aux envolées scandalisées. Mais le général Prayuth Chan-ocha, leader versatile du «Conseil national pour la paix et l’ordre» (NCPO), appellation officielle de la junte militaire qui renversa en mai 2014 le premier gouvernement élu du pays, resta de marbre. Prayuth affirma que la peine de mort était «une nécessité», et qu’elle existait pour «garantir la paix nationale et donner des leçons».

Voici les mots de l’homme à qui le président Emmanuel Macron déroulera le tapis rouge au Palais de l’Elysée lundi.…  Seguir leyendo »

Two girls watch a World Cup soccer match on June 18, 2014, in a holding area for immigrant children in Nogales, Ariz. (Ross D. Franklin/AP)

ReflexionesSocial

Four years as the U.N. high commissioner for human rights have brought me many luminous encounters and desperate struggles, much painful and shocking information, and some profound lessons that may take many years to fully assimilate.

I have constantly circled back to the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, where this story truly began. It was a time of slaughter and terrible suffering, with broken economies and nations emerging from the ashes of two global wars, an immense genocide, atomic destruction and the Great Depression. Finding solutions that could ensure global — and national — peace was a matter of the starkest kind of survival.…  Seguir leyendo »

Iranian lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh. (BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images)

MundoOriente Próximo,

On Wednesday, Iran’s leading human rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, was arrested again. It was a reminder that President Hassan Rouhani is failing to deliver on many of the key reforms he promised when he was elected in 2013.

Writing on his Facebook page, Sotoudeh’s husband, Reza Khandan, announced that “a few hours ago Nasrin was arrested at home and sent to the court at Evin [Prison].”

This family has been through all of this before. “I once told interrogators in the interrogation room: ‘Of all the things the authorities should do for their country, you only know one, and that is arresting people,’” Khandan fearlessly wrote in his post.…  Seguir leyendo »

A Turkish police officer watches a political rally in Istanbul in front of posters of the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, left, and the current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (Lefteris Pitarakis/AP)

Europa,

Turkey recently called snap elections to be held June 24, even as it extended the state of emergency for a seventh time since a failed coup attempt in 2016. And in the wake of a 2017 constitutional referendum that vested extraordinary powers in President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, observers warn that Turkey is on the fast track to authoritarianism.

While not part of the European Union, Turkey is member of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The court retains the force of law over contracting states and has previously ruled on contentious issues from prisoners’ right to vote to the treatment of terrorism suspects in custody.…  Seguir leyendo »

Burmese security forces stand guard during unrest at a camp for Muslim Rohingya refugees on the outskirts of the town of Sittwe in Rakhine State. (AFP)

MundoAsia, ,

While the United States debates reimposing targeted sanctions on top military leaders in Burma, much of the focus is on the heart-rending Rohingya crisis.

But military aggression has escalated recently against the Kachin, an ethnic minority in the north. The Kachin have suffered systemic discrimination for more than six decades. As a citizen of both Burmese and Kachin ethnicity who grew up in this conflict area, I strongly support the calls in Rep. Eliot Engel’s (D-N.Y.) bill for financial and travel sanctions against individuals directly implicated in the violence against civilians.

I want my country to be a prosperous, liberal democratic society.…  Seguir leyendo »

Protesters demanding that China respect human rights in its Xinjiang region and release members of the Uighur minority detained in so-called re-education centers there, in Brussels in April.CreditEmmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

MundoAsia, ,

What does it take to intern half a million members of one ethnic group in just a year? Enormous resources and elaborate organization, but the Chinese authorities aren’t stingy. Vast swathes of the Uighur population in China’s western region of Xinjiang — as well as Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and other ethnic minorities — are being detained to undergo what the state calls “transformation through education.” Many tens of thousands of them have been locked up in new thought-control camps with barbed wire, bombproof surfaces, reinforced doors and guard rooms.

The Chinese authorities are cagey and evasive, if not downright dismissive, about reports concerning such camps.…  Seguir leyendo »

In 1919, Jewish men in Whitechapel, East London, marched to protest the killing of Jews in Poland.CreditTopical Press Agency/Getty Images

MundoOriente Próximo, ,

Seventy years ago today, Israel came into existence — the first Jewish state in more than 2,000 years. But at the United Nations, there won’t be a celebration. Indeed, Palestinian Authority leaders recently lodged their latest complaint at the U.N. Human Rights Council — a body that has condemned Israel more than any other country combined, including Syria, North Korea and Iran — accusing Israel of “racial segregation,” “apartheid” and “colonial occupation.”

With language like this, it is not hard to see Zionism itself on trial in the court of human rights.

This apparent tension between Zionism and progressive values isn’t just playing out at the United Nations.…  Seguir leyendo »

Los derechos humanos y el destino del orden liberal

InternacionalOrden Mundial

Muchos expertos han proclamado la muerte del orden internacional liberal post-1945, inclusive el régimen de derechos humanos establecido en la Declaración Universal de Derechos Humanos de 1948. Una tapa reciente de Foreign Policy mostraba la paloma blanca de los derechos humanos atravesada por las flechas sangrientas de la reacción autoritaria.

Según los teóricos “realistas” de las relaciones internacionales, no se puede sustentar el orden mundial liberal cuando dos de las tres grandes potencias -Rusia y China- son antiliberales. En un artículo en Foreign Affairs, Yascha Mounk y Roberto Stefan Foa sostienen que la era en que las democracias liberales occidentales eran las principales potencias culturales y económicas del mundo quizás esté por terminar.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

Esta semana, el mundo contiene el aliento durante la cuenta atrás de la decisión de Trump sobre Irán y Shirin Ebadi cruza el umbral de la puerta de mi casa. La primera mujer musulmana que ganó el Nobel de la Paz se revuelve contra esta escalada hacia la Guerra: “La cuestión nuclear no es el motivo, sino el pretexto. El problema con Irán es su agresiva política militar en Siria, en el Líbano y en Irak, pero la solución no es la guerra ni las sanciones, porque eso devolvería al regimen iraní el apoyo de la sociedad que está perdiendo”.

En la primavera de 2009, conocí a Shirin Ebadí en la ciudad guatemalteca de La Antigua.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia,

La conculcación masiva de los derechos humanos supone una amenaza a la paz y la seguridad internacionales, tal como han sentenciado diversos órganos de Naciones Unidas. Sin embargo, la paz no estriba solo en la ausencia de guerra. La paz ha de ser justa. Una paz de esa naturaleza en la península coreana exigiría no sólo la liquidación del chantaje nuclear que realiza Pyongyang sino también el fin de la pavorosa situación que padece buena parte del pueblo norcoreano, víctima de prácticas atroces, calificadas por la ONU, la UE y otros actores internacionales de crímenes de lesa humanidad. Se trata de un gobierno que firmó el Tratado de No Proliferación de Armas Nucleares para obtener beneficios económicos y comerciales y del que se retiró cuando le vino en gana.…  Seguir leyendo »

How the Human Rights Movement Failed

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia

The human rights movement, like the world it monitors, is in crisis: After decades of gains, nearly every country seems to be backsliding. Viktor Orban in Hungary, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines and other populist leaders routinely express contempt for human rights and their defenders.

But from the biggest watchdogs to monitors at the United Nations, the human rights movement, like the rest of the global elite, seems to be drawing the wrong lessons from its difficulties.

Advocates have doubled down on old strategies without reckoning that their attempts to name and shame can do more to stoke anger than to change behavior.…  Seguir leyendo »

China’s Oppression Reaches Beyond Its Borders

MundoAsia, ,

The first threatening phone call that Zhuang Liehong got in New York was in the fall of 2016, on a gloriously warm September morning. The call came from a jail where his father was being held following a protest in Mr. Zhuang’s home village in Southern China. “Is this Zhuang Liehong?” asked an unfamiliar voice. When Mr. Zhuang said yes, there was a pause and his father’s voice came on the line. “Son,” he said, “stop doing what you’re doing. It will be bad for your family.”

What Mr. Zhuang had been doing, for the most part, was posting on Facebook.…  Seguir leyendo »

Indonesian PM Joko Widodo. Photo: Getty Images.

MundoAsia,
Does the Indonesian government adequately protect human rights?

It does and it does not; it really depends on the context. Indonesia looks good among its neighbours in Southeast Asia in terms of protection of civil and political rights, and to some extent economic, social and cultural rights, although room for improvements exists.

But one of the promises of the current president, Joko Widodo, during his 2014 campaign was about international criminal justice, which involves rights for many victims of past cases of human rights abuses in Indonesia. In that sense, it does not protect these rights, including the rights to justice, truth, reparations or guarantees of non-recurrence.…  Seguir leyendo »

Dutch investigators examine pieces of the crashed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in the village of Rassipne, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, in 2014. (Dmitry Lovetsky/AP)

ReflexionesPensamiento, Cultura y Ciencia,

In the past few years, the brave new online world has made it both much easier, and vastly harder, to establish the facts about human rights violations. Human rights investigators are racing to take advantage of, and struggling to keep up with, the latest technology advances, from satellite imagery to artificial intelligence, from fake news to increasingly sophisticated computer-generated visuals.

And it’s all about to get worse. Hollywood and entertainment technologies that thrill moviegoers and gamers are becoming more available to those who create fake news. Soon it will be easy for anyone to fake highly credible photos and videos — and hard for any of us to believe our eyes.…  Seguir leyendo »