Is democracy at risk of extinction?

Is democracy at risk of extinction?

Post By World Authoritarianism, Human rights, politics, Poll

This article was originally published in Italian

According to a survey by Open society foundations, more than a third of 18-35 year olds favour a military regime or an authoritarian leader. How did it come to this?

Do people still believe in democracy? This was the question asked by a recent Open Society Foundations poll, which for the second consecutive year surveyed more than 36,000 people in 30 countries around the world to hear their opinions and feelings about human rights, democracy, and other important issues facing countries around the world.

The “Open Society Barometer: Is Democracy Effective?” survey, one of the largest global polls ever conducted, was conducted between May and July 2023 and the results, published in the run-up to International Democracy Day, are surprising, to say the least.

The concept of democracy is still widely popular in every region of the world: 86% of respondents say they would prefer to live in a democratic state and 62% believe that democracy is the best possible form of government. In Italy, the results were 91% and 69% respectively.

Only 20% of people said that authoritarian states are more capable of satisfying citizens’ demands and are more efficient in dealing with major issues at home and in the international arena.

What is surprising, however, is that although trust in democracy is still high across the board, the age group that is most sceptical about its effectiveness is the youngest one, those aged 18 to 35.

If we look at the data disaggregated by age group, the percentage of citizens who consider democracy to be the best possible form of government drops to 55% among the youngest, while it is 61.4% among the 35 to 55-year-olds and 69% among those older than 56.

What is more, 42% of those aged 18-35 said that a military regime is a good way to govern a country, while 35% are in favour of a ‘strong’ leader who dispenses with elections and parliament. In Italy, the percentages drop to 24 and 32%, respectively.

But how did we get here – and what does it mean for the survival of democracy?

“It is really worrying that the lowest support is in the youngest group, the 18 to 35-year-olds because today we have the largest generation of young people. Half of the world is under 30,” says Natalie Samarasinghe, Global director for advocacy at Open Society Foundations.

But, she says, context is important. “It is a combination of factors. We are facing a generation that has experienced a series of shocks: economic crises, COVID-19, climate change, and it is more than proven that authoritarian states have not handled these crises well, but neither have democracies. When you grow up in an era of instability and crisis, you have little trust in politicians. So I think this translates to scepticism about the system as a whole.”

In addition to the feeling that politicians have failed to deal with the major crises of recent years, there is also the impression ‘that they are worse off’ than their parents in terms of socio-economic conditions and, finally, the lack of representation: “How many young people feel that they have a say in democracy when the issues they fight for are never at the top of the agenda?”, asks Samarasinghe.

This disaffection for democracy thus stems from a general and continuous mismatch between what citizens demand and what is then actually delivered by the political class. On average, about one-third of the respondents do not trust politicians to work in their interests and address the issues they care about. Primarily poverty, inequality and human rights, climate change and corruption.

The responsibility of other generations

Gianfranco Pasquino, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, agrees with Samarasinghe not only on the socio-economic difficulties that have marked the last generations but also on the responsibility of the political class. “Parties have become inadequate structures. Parties teach democracy, practise it and show how to practise it. A great American political scientist wrote a book in the early 1940s saying that parties are born with democracy and democracy is born with parties. Consequently, democracy dies if parties die and instead thrives if parties recover. But I do not see this effort on the part of politicians,” Pasquino explains.

However, the professor also attributes some of the responsibility for young people’s disaffection with the democratic system to the older generations, who are progressively more pro-democracy. Among the over 56 interviewed, the most authoritarian regimes are not particularly popular: only 20% are open to a military state, and 26% to a strong leader.

A considerable difference with younger people, but one that is easily explained according to Pasquino: “Quite simply, many of them have lived part of their lives under an authoritarian regime and know that they would never want to go back. Instead, they have had positive or at least better experiences with democracy than young people. But it would have been better if they had passed on this information, feelings and emotions to their children. Perhaps they did not do it enough.”

Is democracy at risk of extinction?

So what does this data tell us about the health and future of democracy? Is there really a risk that the democratic system will gradually fade away? Neither expert sees this as even remotely possible.

“Democracies continue to appear, and the established ones have never fallen. It is actually wrong to say that there is a crisis of democracy, there are problems in the functioning within some democracies, for example,Hungary, for example, Poland, but democracy is not in crisis,” says Professor Pasquino.

Samarasinghe goes even deeper: “The trend has always been and will be towards more freedom. And I think this survey also shows that there is this desire. Only that people now see a discrepancy between this desire and their lives. But I don’t think their solution is ‘OK, we will turn to an authoritarian system’. It may be a short-term solution, but not a long-term one. The values that people personally hold dear, including human rights, are so deeply rooted even in countries that currently have more authoritarian governments, that they cannot possibly fade away.”

Rather, the concern is another: what can happen during this period of misalignment. “I think political leaders, national and international, need to keep in mind what the consequences of inaction are. It is not just a matter of saying: ‘OK, we don’t want to give up coal production now because we have this industry in the lobby and we might lose the next election.’ The whole system is at stake here.”

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EU action can help put a stop to killings of human rights defenders

Post By World Assassination, European Union, Human rights, human rights activist, murder

It has been almost eight years since the Paris Agreement was finalised. In that time, at least 1,390 defenders advocating for a healthy environment and rights linked to land have been killed, Mary Lawlor writes.

Human rights defenders in every region of the world are peacefully organising and advocating to ensure equitable access to land and prevent environmental destruction.

Their activism and leadership is key to the realisation of societies in which respect for human rights is a reality, including the right to a healthy environment. Yet fatal attacks against these defenders continue.

According to the latest research by the NGO Global Witness, 177 land and environmental rights defenders were killed in 2022.

The stories documented in the organisation’s new report are heavy and painful. Five children were among those killed in the attacks, including nine-year old Jonatas de Oliviera dos Santos, who was targeted in retaliation for his father’s work in Brazil.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, agreed by consensus by all member states at the UN General Assembly in 1998.

It is in the declaration that we find the right to defend rights codified. There needs to be a new resolve to make good on that right in order to stop the killings, both where state and non-state actors are implicated, and the EU — with its new law on environmental and human rights due diligence — can play a key role.

Latin American, Indigenous and campesino defenders targeted

Almost 90% of the deaths recorded by Global Witness took place in Latin America, and more than a third of those killed were Indigenous defenders, with close to a quarter campesino advocates — small-scale farmers, peasants and agricultural workers.

Those most at risk of these fatal attacks are advocating in their local communities, often in rural areas where access to land is an imperative for the fulfilment of human rights.

One of the killings detailed in the report is that of Rarámuri Indigenous leader José Trinidad Baldenegro, from the Coloradas de la Virgen community in the south of Chihuahua in Mexico.

Indigenous defenders from the community have been opposing deforestation from illegal logging for decades, despite a series of assassinations of those involved.

In 1986, when he was 11 years old, José’s father was killed. His brother, the environmental activist Isidro Baldenegro, was murdered in 2017. Julián Carrillo, another Indigenous defender engaged in the community’s struggle, was killed in 2018.

What does effective protection look like?

Killings not only take the life of the victims, but have a massive impact on the families of those targeted and the communities they come from.

After Julián Carrillo was killed in 2018, his family left the community for fear of further retaliation. In a rare instance of accountability through the courts, investigations in Mexico led to prosecutions for Julián’s murder, yet such examples remain the exception, with impunity for killings remaining extremely common.

Killings in Colombia, Brazil, Mexico and Honduras account for 139 of the assassinations documented by Global Witness last year.

All of these states have mechanisms specifically designed for the protection of human rights defenders, and are making efforts to improve the practical support they can offer through them and address issues in how they operate. Yet these efforts need to intensify.

The states most affected by killings should work together to share good practices and learn from defenders about what effective protection might look like, in particular in rural contexts.

They should support defenders to make links with one another to share self-protection and quick-response strategies that need to be viewed as going hand-in-hand with state-based protection. There has been some progress and solutions are possible.

No more business as usual: regulation needs to address root causes

Despite the heavy concentration of killings in a small number of states — with the Philippines also a country of high concern, given the 11 killings recorded there — the root causes of the attacks cannot be reduced to the conditions in a few national contexts.

More than 12% of the killings recorded in 2022 were linked to business activities and supply chains, where the responsibility to act extends beyond borders.

The negative human rights impacts and related risks for defenders opposing them have been well-documented when it comes to high-impact sectors, including mining, logging and agribusiness.

The home states of companies active in these industries need to draw a line under toxic business practices and effectively legislate to prevent them.

That includes EU member states, and the EU can make a difference by obliging companies across all sectors to assess risks for human rights defenders under the proposed Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive.

They should also ensure investors do not fund projects where defenders could be under threat.

Positive positions, if imperfect, have been adopted by the European Council and the European Parliament in relation to provisions for defenders in the directive, and they must be improved still — not watered down — as negotiations progress.

Protect defenders to protect the climate

The need to protect defenders, including through binding obligations for companies, and to offer them greater support is magnified by the urgent global imperative to combat climate change and mitigate its impacts.

It has been almost eight years since the Paris Agreement was finalised. In that time, at least 1,390 defenders advocating for a healthy environment and rights linked to land have been killed.

In 2022, as the Global Witness report lays out, at least 39 land and environmental defenders were killed in the Amazon, an area both crucial for mitigating climate change and set to be highly impacted by it.

As part of the prioritisation of social justice and inclusion which, as the IPPC has stated, is essential to enable a just transition away from our current high-carbon economy, states should embrace human rights defenders as allies in fulfilling their human rights and climate obligations.

They should make good on promises to improve their protection, support their networks and advocacy, including at COP28, and listen them to ensure risks to human rights are addressed and violations remedied.

Mary Lawlor is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders.

At Euronews, we believe all views matter. Contact us at [email protected] to send pitches or submissions and be part of the conversation.

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Crimes ‘beyond imagination’: Saudi border guards killed hundreds of migrants, HRW report says

Post By World Ethiopia, Features, Human rights, Middle East, Migrants, Saudi Arabia, Yemen

Between March 2022 and June 2023, Saudi border guards killed hundreds of Ethiopian migrants attempting to cross the border from Yemen into the oil-rich kingdom, according to a new Human Rights Watch report released on Monday. The report comes as Saudi Arabia implements an anti-migrant policy at home and a campaign to boost its image abroad.

The rocky, mountainous region around Sadaa – a hardscrabble city in northern Yemen right by the Saudi border – has turned into lethal terrain, according to human rights groups. Bodies of dead or seriously wounded migrants, mostly from Ethiopia, have been spotted in satellite imagery and social media posts from the border, providing harrowing testimony of abuses, notes the latest report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).

“They Fired on Us Like Rain”, an HRW report released on Monday, August 21, records widespread abuses committed on the Yemen-Saudi border between March 2022 and June 2023.

“Saudi border guards have used explosive weapons and shot people at close range, including women and children, in a pattern that is widespread and systematic. If committed as part of a Saudi government policy to murder migrants, these killings would be a crime against humanity,” notes the report.

‘Guards forced 17-year-old boy to rape girl survivors’

08:09

Over the past few months, reports have been mounting of grievous violations on the migration track known as the “Eastern Route” or the “Yemeni Route”, which runs from the Horn of Africa, across the Gulf of Aden, through Yemen and into Saudi Arabia.

A July 5 report by the Mixed Migration Centre, an independent data institution within the Danish Refugee Council, said Ethiopians were being “systematically” killed by “security officials operating under Saudi Arabian state authority”.

In October 2022, the UN published its Expert Communications by special rapporteurs and working groups highlighting cross-border killings, “using artillery shelling and small arms fired by Saudi security forces”. Nearly 430 people were killed between January 1 and April 30, 2022, according to the communique.

The latest HRW report provides witness accounts of Ethiopian migrants who tried to cross the border from Yemen to Saudi Arabia – and it makes grim reading.

‘I saw 30 killed people on the spot’

In February 2023, a 14-year-old from Ethiopia’s Oromia region, identified in the HRW report as “Hamdiya”, attempted to cross the Yemeni-Saudi border in a group of around 60 people.

The horror unfolded immediately after they crossed into Saudi territory, when they came under attack by border guards, Hamdiya told HRW.

“I saw people killed in a way I have never imagined,” said Hamdiya. “I saw 30 killed people on the spot.”

In a bid to escape the repeated firing, the Ethiopian teenager crawled under a rock and at some point, fell asleep. “I could feel people sleeping around me. I realised what I thought were people sleeping around me were actually dead bodies. I woke up and I was alone,” she said.

Like Hamdiya, many witnesses claimed to have been shot with mortars or other explosive weapons by Saudi border guards.

‘The dead bodies are there’

In one incident, a survivor recounted that he was part of a group of 170 people who attempted to cross the border when they came under fire. “I know 90 people were killed, because some returned to that place to pick up the dead bodies – they counted around 90 dead bodies,” he explained.

Another interviewee went to the Saudi border to collect the body of a girl from his village. “Her body was piled up on top of 20 bodies,” he said. “It is really impossible to count the number. It is beyond the imagination. People are going in different groups day to day. The dead bodies are there.”

While the exact number of migrants killed while crossing the border is impossible to determine, the HRW report was compiled from interviews with 42 Ethiopians or relatives of Ethiopians who attempted the border crossing. The rights group also analysed more than 350 videos and photographs posted on social media or gathered from other sources in addition to satellite imagery.

Data gathering from the remote border area is hampered by the lack of international mechanisms to monitor the human rights situation in Yemen.

Barely two years ago, the UN Human Rights Council voted to disband the Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen (GEE), an international investigating body, following a “tireless lobbying campaign” by Saudi Arabia, according to a 2021 HRW statement.

The decision has left no system of accountability in the world’s poorest Arab nation ravaged by a civil war that has killed more than 150,000 people. It is also failing citizens on another continent who are fleeing poverty and ethnic conflict.

‘Saudization’ increases targeting of migrants

An estimated 750,000 Ethiopians currently live in Saudi Arabia according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Roughly 500,000 entered the country illegally, according to the IOM, forcing them to hide from Saudi authorities.

The oil-rich Gulf kingdom has long been a magnet for impoverished migrants in the region, particularly from Yemen, which shares a 1,300-kilometre border with Saudi Arabia. Non-Saudi nationals account for more than 30 percent of the kingdom’s population.

But in 2017, Riyadh implemented a massive “Saudization” policy, aimed at reducing its dependence on migrant workers. It resulted in intensified police crackdowns, detentions of illegal migrants and massive expulsion campaigns.

Riyadh’s “Saudization” policy came as fighting raged in neighbouring Yemen and in the Horn of Africa, turning migrants into pawns in regional tensions.

Pawns in regional conflicts

In Yemen, a civil war erupted in 2014 when Iran-backed Houthi rebels swept down from their northern stronghold and chased the internationally recognised government from the capital, Sanaa. A Saudi-led coalition intervened the following year on behalf of the government, and in time the conflict turned into a proxy war between Riyadh and Tehran.

The restoration of ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran in April sparked hopes of an end to the conflict. But Houthi attacks have picked up over the past few weeks, prompting a warning by UN special envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg of “public threats to return to war”.

Across the Gulf of Aden, conflict erupted in Ethiopia in the northern Tigray region, between Ethiopian military forces and Tigrayan troops along with allied Oromo militants. Following a Tigrayan peace deal in November, fighting erupted in the Amhara region over the Ethiopian military’s efforts to disband Amhara militias who fought with the army against Tigrayan rebels, exposing the country’s deteriorating ethnic relations.

Saudi Arabia has long been a destination for Ethiopian migrants, but following the conflicts in the region, their situation has turned desperate. In April 2020, Houthi fighters forcibly expelled thousands of Ethiopian migrants from northern Yemen, forcing them to cross the border into Saudi Arabia. Several dozen of them were killed and many survivors sent to detention centres on the border. Violations in Yemeni detention centres have been extreme, with rights groups documenting allegations of torture and rape.

The latest escalation of violations along the Saudi-Yemen border appears to be “deliberate” and “targeted”, according to HRW.

“While Human Rights Watch has previously documented killings of migrants at the border with Yemen and Saudi Arabia since 2014, the killings documented in this report appear to be a deliberate escalation in both the number and manner of targeted killings,” notes the report.

“In recent years, Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in deflecting attention from its abysmal human rights record at home and abroad, spending billions of dollars to host major entertainment, cultural, and sporting events,” the report notes.

Less than five years after Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was dismembered in Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, Western nations are warming up to the kingdom’s crown prince and de-facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, as the Ukraine war unleashes tectonic geopolitical shifts, particularly in the energy sector.

The findings of the latest report highlight the need for international calls for accountability, according to Nadia Hardman, author of the HRW report.

“Concerned governments should publicly call for Saudi Arabia to end any policy, whether explicit or in effect, to target migrants with explosive weapons and close-range attacks,” noted Hardman. “Human Rights Watch calls on organisers and participants in major international events sponsored by the Saudi government to speak out publicly on rights issues or, when whitewashing Saudi Arabia’s human rights record is the primary purpose, not to participate.”

This article is a translation of the original in French.

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We can’t allow our right to water to go down the drain

Post By World European Union, Human rights, Water resources, Water shortage

By Catarina de Albuquerque, CEO, Sanitation and Water for All, former UN special rapporteur

Published on
16/08/2023 – 13:21•Updated 17/08/2023 – 15:09

When all is said and done, Europeans are still finding their access to water under threat and measures taken to protect this fundamental human right might not be bold enough, Catarina de Albuquerque writes.

For the Berriennois — residents of the tiny village of Berrien nestled in France’s mountainous northwest — summer 2022 won’t easily be forgotten.

Terrifying wildfires, sparked by searing temperatures, ravaged the desiccated alpine landscape, while non-existent rainfall saw water supplies dwindle dangerously low.

Lacking a viable alternative, local authorities opted to draw on reserves from a disused kaolin quarry, only for high levels of arsenic to be detected.

A hasty public messaging campaign warned Berrien’s 900 or so inhabitants not to drink from their taps. In the end, government leaders resorted to shipping in thousands of pallets of bottled water.

It was an imperfect, unsustainable solution to a problem that’s set to get much, much worse.

Water woes coming our way

By the 2070s, as global temperatures rise, research indicates that more than a third of the EU will be under high water stress — and in the next three decades, some 17% of the continent’s people could face extreme water scarcity.

These predictions paint a bleak picture for the future but be under no illusions: climate change is already impacting Europeans’ access to water.

From the water woes of Berrien to the draconian 18-hour-a-day water prohibition in Bonastre, a small town south of Barcelona, to water conservation pleas directed at residents of Oslo — a city not often associated with drought — few corners of Europe were left untouched by the unprecedented heatwave that scorched the continent last summer.

For many, it was an eye-opening event, one that laid bare the misconception that climate change is something happening to other — that is to say, developing — parts of the world.

This overdue revelation leads to an obvious question: is enough being done to protect Europe against its emergent water scarcity crisis?

Policies that work on the conceptual level are rarely foolproof

At the supranational policy-making level, some progress has been made, but there’s still much left to be achieved.

Right2Water, a vigorous continent-wide public pressure campaign, has called on the EU to formally implement the human rights to water and sanitation, as recognised by the United Nations General Assembly in 2010.

In response to the movement, the European Commission has brought forth an obligation on member states to improve or maintain access to safe drinking water for all, with a particular focus on vulnerable and marginalised groups.

How these obligations are dealt with differs from country to country, with those facing the most immediate scarcity issues taking a more proactive approach.

Of this, my native Portugal is a notable example. In the 1970s, emerging from decades of dictatorship and the tumult of the Carnation Revolution, Europe’s westernmost nation had a creaking water management sector in need of root-and-branch reform.

The years that followed saw huge development, with 99% of the country’s running water now safe to drink.

Portugal has also conducted comprehensive scientific studies of its water resources, factoring in climate and demographic forecasts to better understand how usage patterns and availability will evolve as the century progresses.

Human consumption, meanwhile, is prioritised before industrial and agricultural use under Portuguese law, and in areas of greatest water scarcity — such as the sun-soaked Algarve region — authorities have the power to block new business developments if there is a risk to public access.

At a conceptual level, this is a worthy policy; but in practice, such rules are rarely foolproof.

Hitting the right notes doesn’t mean the problem is solved

In August, with reservoirs in several parts of the country dropping critically low, the Portuguese government urged dozens of municipalities to increase consumer water prices — a move that critics say could push vulnerable, cash-strapped families towards water poverty.

And herein lies the fundamental problem: politicians might hit the right notes with their “human rights to water and sanitation” rhetoric, and might have the policies and even the laws in place to substantiate that rhetoric.

But when all is said and done, people are still finding their access to water under threat and measures taken to protect this fundamental human right might not be bold enough.

Just look at Tesla’s much-feted factory outside of Berlin. Situated in a drought-stricken stretch of Brandenburg — a state co-ruled by the German Green party — the EV manufacturer’s planned expansion is consuming so much water that new subterranean sources are having to be drilled.

As the region’s largest employer, there’s a clear economic and political case for Tesla’s deepening presence in the area. Yet, with local residents and experts alike warning that drinking water reserves could soon be depleted, surely a rethink is required.

Ultimately, despite some promising steps, it’s clear that European governments — possibly under EU direction — must adopt a far more rigorous and integrated approach to water management, one that accounts for our changing climate, and puts human rights at the heart of all water policy decision-making.

Catarina de Albuquerque is the Chief Executive Officer of the United Nations-hosted Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) global partnership. She was the first UN special rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation.

At Euronews, we believe all views matter. Contact us at [email protected] to send pitches or submissions and be part of the conversation.

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The EU has to be aware of the ultimate threat to Cambodia’s democracy

Post By World cambodia, Election results, European Union, Human rights, Opposition

By Sam Rainsy, Interim leader, Cambodian National Party • Updated: 26/07/2023
– 18:05

If the West were to recognise recent election results enabling a dynastic one-party state, it would mean encouraging dictators worldwide and failing the Cambodian people and the international legal order, Sam Rainsy writes.

On Sunday, the world witnessed yet another wholly fraudulent election in Cambodia.

This Soviet-style pseudo-act of democracy, in a country that has been ruled by one man since 1985, was about paving the way for a dynastic transition between Hun Sen and his son, Hun Manet.

The current leader of the country’s army, and a graduate of West Point, NYU, and Bristol University, many hope that Cambodian democracy may be reborn with Manet coming to power – but, make no mistake, just like with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, this will not be the case.

Hun Manet will continue the rule of this father, who, for almost four decades, has built a highly centralised power structure, which prioritises self-aggrandisement, and that has little respect for democracy or human rights.

Under Hun Sen’s watch, extrajudicial killings, torture, arbitrary arrests, summary trials, censorship, bans on assembly and association, and a national network of spies and informers have become commonplace.

This is the backdrop to Cambodia’s fledgling democracy and an environment that the international community is seemingly incapable of responding resolutely.

The formal transition between Hun Sen and Hun Manet was announced on Wednesday and is set to happen by the end of the summer, in time for the son to address the UN General Assembly in September.

For the international community to recognise this undemocratic handover of power on the back of a sham election in which the main opposition party was formally banned from fielding candidates means to condone the regime’s systemic human rights abuses and totalitarianism.

Cambodia is no longer a pluralist nation as defined in its constitution — it is merely a one-party state.

Hun Sen’s threats are not just threats

Over a quarter of candidates in this year’s elections are related to members of Hun Sen’s government. Political opposition has been stifled in the country.

I, myself, have spent the past seven years in exile. In my absence, Hun Sen’s administration sentenced me to life in prison, and on 31 May, publicly threatened to kill me with missiles if I return to my country.

I am only one of hundreds that he has threatened in this way — and these are not mere threats.

Candlelight, the only credible opposition party, was banned from the elections in May on a bureaucratic technicality.

This year, its members have reported being attacked in the street by masked men.

Political dissidents of all kinds have been targeted, including the president of the labour union Chea Vichea, who was killed in 2004; environmentalists like the members of the NGO Mother Nature, arrested and imprisoned in 2020; as well as independent political analysts like Kem Ley, who was shot dead in 2016.

Kem Sohka, leader of our party, the banned Cambodia National Rescue Party, was sentenced to 27 years in prison on spurious charges.

There has also been a systematic assault on the country’s free press, with popular newspapers, including Cambodia Daily and The Phnom Penh Post, either closed or subject to hostile takeovers by those allied with Hun Sen.

In the case of the latter, the outlet was sold out of state to a Malaysian investor linked with the prime minister and, in turn, has subsequently shifted its editorial line to support government activity.

The case of Hun Sen vs Facebook

Hun Sen’s campaign to obstruct the freedom of expression for Cambodians extends to social media.

Last month, he deleted his Facebook account following a ruling by Meta’s Oversight Board that he should face a six-month ban from the platform over a video post in which he yet again threatened to have opponents beaten.

The following day, the Cambodian Ministry of Post and Telecommunications announced they would deport a Meta representative immediately, and Cambodia would cease all cooperation with the company.

In a subsequent statement, all members of its Oversight Board were banned from entering the country.

Meanwhile, in the past few weeks, Hun Sen threatened to block Facebook entirely for the election period, thus depriving citizens of access to a forum that is free of government censorship.

This, ultimately, did not happen, but Hun Sen was explicit in his desired aims: to prevent contact between exiled opposition leaders and citizens of the country.

To achieve this, China-style National Internet Gateway was introduced, offering blanket regime control over any online activity.

Voided ballots led to immense fines and arbitrary arrests

Ahead of fraudulent elections, we led a campaign for Cambodians to void their ballot papers, en masse, in protest at Hun Sen’s regime and the absence of an alternative political opposition.

And this was something that Hun Sen feared. To mitigate against the impacts of such a move, he made spoiling a ballot a fineable offence of 20 million riels (€4,500) and charged me and others who advocated this hitherto lawful behaviour with attempting to undermine the election process.

He also ensured that polling booths were staffed only by members of his ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), thus adding a further layer of intimidation.

And this was all after a widespread series of arbitrary arrests, focusing on local Candlelight leaders, including youth and women’s wings, and the forced defection of political prisoners — with some being offered government roles in exchange for their release, or even access to medical care previously denied to them.

The EU and the West should not fail the Cambodian people

The international community must back the democrats of Cambodia. They signed the Paris Accords as an obligation, when the first free and fair elections were held in June 1993, to guarantee that the Cambodian vote was free and peaceful.

They’re reneging on that promise. Hun Sen should be an international pariah, yet he chaired ASEAN for the third time in 2022.

In this capacity, under false hope for the restoration of democracy, he was invited to co-chair a summit with the EU in the US, further lending his regime the legitimacy of the West.

The UK just signed a billion-dollar trade agreement with Cambodia, while the EU’s partial withdrawal of tariff-free benefits for Cambodian goods entering the EU-27, on human rights and labour rights grounds, affects just 20% of exports.

Given the blatant breach of international obligations, the restriction of these special privileges ought to be significantly increased, and new sanctions from other countries should include asset freezes imposed on high-ranking officials involved in human rights violations.

We fear that, despite talk of monitoring Hun Sen’s disregard for human rights, many democratic leaders, particularly in the West, will ultimately recognise these fraudulent elections and give Sen the international legitimacy he needs to complete the dynastic transition to his son.

Doing so would come at a high cost, as it will mean encouraging dictators worldwide and failing the Cambodian people and the international legal order. This cannot happen.

Sam Rainsy is the interim leader of the Cambodian National Party, the main opposition party that was banned from standing in the 2018 Cambodian General Election. He lives in exile in Paris.

At Euronews, we believe all views matter. Contact us at [email protected] to send pitches or submissions and be part of the conversation.

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Video: The ‘hunt’ for Haitian migrants continues in the Dominican Republic

Post By World Americas, Haiti, Human rights, Migration

A video of a young child hanging from the arms of a detained Haitian woman through the barred door of an immigration control truck in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, was published in early June. The country’s migration director later dismissed the agent seen in the video. According to human rights groups, Haitians regularly face violent and arbitrary arrests. Every month, thousands of them are deported, despite calls from the UN to halt these forced removals.

Issued on: 14/07/2023 – 22:24

4 min

In early June, videos taken in the Dominican Republic’s capital Santo Domingo began circulating on Twitter. They show a young child hanging from the arms of a detained woman through the barred door of an immigration control truck, while an immigration agent simply watches. The vehicle then drives off.

¿Dónde está Juan Ramón Rodríguez García? Un agente desvinculado de @MigracionRDo que no figura en la nómina ni en la consulta de Contraloría. ¿Cómo se permite la contratación de personal sin preparación en migración? Exijamos transparencia y calidad en nuestras instituciones. pic.twitter.com/1c7TKVgJBl

— Cañeros Organizados (@EsclavizadosRD) June 5, 2023

Vidéo tournée à Saint-Domingue, en République dominicaine, début juin.

On social media, some said they believed the incident was an “isolated case”. Others made racist comments towards Haitians in the Dominican Republic. But many Internet users were also shocked by the disturbing scene.

Las redadas migratorias en República Dominicana se han convertido en una jauría humana, sin límites.

¿Quién podrá exigir los derechos humanos en República Dominicana de la comunidad migrante y sus descendientes? pic.twitter.com/efpyDZyEoc

— Cañeros Organizados (@EsclavizadosRD) June 2, 2023

Another video filmed in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, in early June, showing the same incident.

In the face of criticism, the Dominican Republic’s migration director said that the immigration agent seen in the video had been dismissed, pointing to a “lack of tact” and “arbitrary behaviour” on his part.

The migration department also told the Observers team that the child in the video was returned to his mother “less than 23 metres away from the place where the video was taken”, and that the woman, “who has irregular status”, had not been deported to Haiti, “for humanitarian reasons”.

“The whole team should have been punished”

Manuel Maria Mercedes, from the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH-RD), a Dominican NGO, told us that more should have been done.

The decision to fire the immigration agent was taken to give them a good image, both nationally and internationally, because the scene shocked people. But this agent was not alone: the whole team with him should have been punished. What’s more, according to our information, the woman and her child were sent back to Haiti.

Thousands of Haitians deported every month, against UN advice

Around half a million Haitians live in the Dominican Republic, but many of them are undocumented or have irregular status.

Every month, thousands of Haitians are deported. Between 12 and 19 June, 4,973 Haitians were deported from the Dominican Republic, despite the calls of the UN to halt these forced removals because of the security, humanitarian, political and economic crisis in Haiti (watch our report “Haiti: In the grip of the gangs” below).

“Haïti: In the grip of the gangs”, an investigation by the FRANCE 24 Observers. © Observers

Human rights groups such as CNDH-RD have also criticised the violent and arbitrary nature of the arrests, as they don’t only affect people in irregular situations.

“Sometimes, people are arrested simply because they’re black”

When migration officers arrive at the places where Haitians live, they stand on street corners and arrest everyone who passes by, regardless of their status, sometimes just because they have black skin. Then they take them to centres, and they are deported from there. Sometimes they arrest mothers without giving them time to look for their children. This has meant that more than 500 children are alone in the Dominican Republic, without their parents.

Concerning deportations, the government has launched a witch-hunt, disregarding international agreements, the Constitution and the law on migration. We are not opposed to deportations, but they must be carried out in accordance with the rule of law.

@imigranhaitienenrd

malgre dam nan endispoze neg pa bal regle anyen pou yo nn kettt mesye Dirijan yo di on bgy pou peyi a nn mesye 🥺🥺🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

♬ son original – IMIGRAN HAITI RD

Video showing a woman being put into a van by immigration agents. It seems that she had lost consciousness before.

“This situation can be partly explained by the anti-Haitian discourse in the Dominican Republic”

Edwin Paraison, the Executive Director of the Zile Foundation, another Dominican organisation, has similar views.

Recently, we saw a man being manhandled and thrown into a van [see video below]: a priori, he was just a tourist. [Our editors were unable to verify this information from an independent source.]

Haitians living in Canada or the United States are frequently arrested when they travel to the Dominican Republic as tourists. Many no longer travel to Haiti because of the crisis, and so they travel to the Dominican Republic to see their relatives who have stayed behind. At the end of 2022, the American embassy issued a warning to African-American citizens about arrests based on their skin colour.

In 2021, there was also a scandal involving pregnant Haitian women who were arrested in hospitals and deported.

Communiqué From The Haitian Embassy In The Dominican Republic In 2021, Concerning Pregnant Women Sent Back To Haiti.

For over a year now, the police and military have also been involved in migration operations. This is problematic because they are not trained to deal with these matters… In addition to unjustified jostling and beatings, Haitians told us that soldiers had also stolen money and mobile phones when entering their homes.

Another problem is that migration officers sometimes demand money from arrested Haitians to free them, between 2,000 and 2,500 pesos [between 32 and 40 euros], inside the lorries.

In my opinion, this situation can be partly explained by the existence of an anti-Haitian discourse in the country among certain politicians, even though Haitian labour is vital in the agro-industry, construction, etc. For example, some people think that Haitians will end up outnumbering Dominicans. This view has gained ground in recent years and is putting the government under pressure, preventing it from managing the migration issue in a pragmatic and supportive way.

The Dominican Republic has already been seriously criticised on the international stage in the past. In 1937, for example, there was a massacre of Haitians. [More than 20,000 of them were killed after the Dominican president decided to eliminate those working on the country’s plantations.] Another example: in 2013, the Constitutional Court decided to withdraw Dominican nationality from people born between 1929 and 2013 to foreign parents.

Meanwhile, the Dominican government has said each country’s migration policy should be “the responsibility of each government” and that it does not want to be the “solution” to all of “Haiti’s problems”.

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#Video #hunt #Haitian #migrants #continues #Dominican #Republic

Teen’s killing raises a French policing issue that dare not be named

Post By World Death of Nahel, Features, France, Human rights, police brutality, racism

The killing of 17-year-old Nahel M. during a police traffic stop this week was a depressingly familiar addition to France’s list of police brutality cases. But when the UN called on the government to address racial discrimination in its police force, the official reaction was just as familiar and depressing for France’s minorities.

On Friday, just a few days after a French police officer shot dead a teenager during a traffic stop in a Paris suburb, the UN Human Rights Office urged France to tackle racial discrimination.

“We are concerned by the killing of a 17-year-old of North African descent by police in France,” UN human rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told a press briefing in Geneva.

“This is a moment for the country to seriously address the deep issues of racism and discrimination in law enforcement,” she added.

Shamdasani’s comments echoed innumerable statements released over the past few years by international rights groups, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, calling on the French state to address “systematic discrimination” particularly “the use of ethnic profiling” during identity checks.

If the UN human rights office believed the police killing of the teenager of Algerian descent, named Nahel M., could be the “moment” for an official French reckoning, it proved to be mistaken.

Shortly after the press conference in Geneva, the French foreign ministry released a statement rejecting the UN’s accusation of racism among its police. “Any accusation of racism or systemic discrimination in the police force in France is totally unfounded,” the foreign ministry said.

Race is a thorny issue in France, a nation that has become multi-ethnic since World War II and the subsequent decolonisation of several African and Asian countries.

The atrocities committed during World War II – including the complicity of the Vichy regime in deporting French Jews to Nazi concentration camps – continue to haunt the issue of ethnic and racial identity in France. The post-war state that emerged from the ashes of World War II is officially colour blind, grants equality to all its citizens, and tends to address social inequalities using class or geographic criteria.

But in the geographic neighbourhoods that experience the worst of police brutality and discrimination, that argument fails to persuade ethnically diverse residents.

Many cases, same message on policing

Nahel’s killing in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre was the latest in a string of cases of police violence in France’s deprived, multi-ethnic banlieues, or suburbs. These include high-profile cases, such as the 2005 deaths of two young men in Clichy-sous-Bois, a Paris suburb, and the 2016 death of Adama Traoré in Val d’Oise, a banlieue further north. The victims were all non-white young males.

At a demonstration in Nanterre two days after Nahel’s death, protesters told journalists they were there to voice their horror over the killing of a teen they never knew, but who was “like” them. “Nahel could have been my brother,’’ a young woman of North African origin told the New York Times. “He was a nonwhite person in this country … Nonwhite people are targeted by the police.”

It’s an allegation that has been frequently repeated at anti-police brutality protests across France over the past few years.

Back in 2020, when the death of George Floyd sparked Black Lives Matter protests across the US, similar demonstrations erupted in France.

Floyd’s killing by a white police officer in Minneapolis evoked comparisons with the case of 24-year-old Traoré, whose death while in police custody in July 2016 sparked days of clashes in the suburbs. Two autopsies and four separate medical examinations have offered conflicting reasons for Traoré’s death, with his family maintaining that he suffocated under the weight of the three officers who used a controversial technique to restrain him.

“Of course France and America are very different countries, but they have a common enemy: racism,” a demonstrator told FRANCE 24 at a June 2020 “Justice for Adama Traoré” protest. “Nothing will ever change until people are educated about racism. Starting with the police.”

One bad apple, not the orchard

The message on the streets is frequently criticised by French government officials, security experts and police union representatives.

No evidence has emerged so far that Nahel was singled out by the police because of his race. The police officer, who was recorded in a video clip shooting into the yellow Mercedes at point blank range, has been charged on two counts: voluntary homicide and “lying” in his initial account that the car had tried to run down the police officers.

Speaking to reporters after Nahel’s killing, French Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti chastised protesters and activists calling for systemic changes in law enforcement agencies.

“The case is against a police officer, not the police in general. This lumping of them all together is intolerable,” said Dupond-Moretti.

Several French officials and security experts conceded that the video footage appeared to show the policeman acting in breach of procedures. But they insist it’s a case of one bad apple, not a rot in the orchard.

“I understand the anger, losing a 17-year-old is tragic. But I think the way the procedure is going, it’s going in the right direction. I think we’re facing a policeman who acted badly, who’s not representative of the whole police force,” André Rakoto, a defence and security analyst at Paris 8 university, told FRANCE 24’s The Debate show.

His fellow panelist, Inès Seddiki, a French-Moroccan activist and founder of GHETT’UP, an NGO working in Paris’s deprived banlieues, disagreed.

“I don’t agree with the justice minister that this officer is on trial, it’s not the whole police. I disagree. I think it’s the whole police,” said Seddiki. “I think it’s a structural problem that we should try to address.”

At war with rioting ‘vermin’

The official position that the police force does not have a discrimination problem because racism has no place in a republic proclaiming equality exasperates academics and activists working in the field.

Reacting to the foreign ministry’s statement that the UN call on France to address police was “unfounded”, Fraser McQueen, a French studies lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, did not mince his words.

“First of all, the denial that there isn’t any systemic racism in the institution of the police is really unconscionable in my view,” said McQueen.

“It’s been consistently picked up on by bodies like France’s ombudsman and by non-governmental organisations like the Open Society, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. In last year’s presidential election, certain figures calculated that as many as 68% of French police officers voted for far-right candidates. So, this idea that there is no systemic racism is just incorrect, it’s false,” he noted.

Studies have consistently shown a rise in the far-right vote among France’s security establishment.

A July 2019 study by the left-leaning Fondation Jean–Jaurès found that more than 50% of French military and law enforcement personnel said they voted for far-right politician Marine Le Pen’s party in recent elections.

In the first round of the 2022 presidential election, 39% of police and military personnel voted for Le Pen while 25% voted for another far-right candidate, Éric Zemmour, according to polling institute Cluster17.

🇫🇷 Vote Présidentielle 2022 par profession – 👮‍♀️👮policiers et militaires

⚫️ Le Pen 39%
🟤 Zemmour 25%
🟡 Macron 14%
🔵 Pécresse 7%
🔴 Mélenchon 4%
🟣 Dupont Aignan 4%
🟢 Lassalle 4%
🔴 Roussel 1%
🟢 Jadot 1%
🔴 Poutou 1%
🟣 Hidalgo 0%
🔴 Arthaud 0%

— Cluster17 (@Cluster_17) July 5, 2022

Police unions have come under particular scrutiny following Nahel’s killing. Following consecutive nights of unrest last week, unions representing half of France’s police on Friday said they were at war with “vermin” rioting in many cities.

“Today police officers are at the front line because we are at war,” the Alliance Police Nationale and UNSA Police unions said in a statement echoing a far-right discourse. “Faced with these savage hordes, it’s no longer enough to call for calm, it must be imposed,” they added.

Friday’s police union statement sounded emollient compared to a tweet posted by France Police, a far-right union, shortly after Nahel’s death hit the headlines in France.

“Congratulations to the colleagues who opened fire on a young 17-year-old criminal. By neutralising his vehicle, they protected their lives and those of other drivers. The only ones responsible for this thug’s death are his parents, who were incapable of educating their son,” it read.

The tweet has since been deleted, and French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has said he will seek the dissolution of the small far-right union.

‘People are scared of the police’

Law enforcement officials and their representatives frequently cite the increasing dangers of their job amid rising levels of anti-police animosity particularly in the banlieues.

“Look at the context. In the last ten years, we’ve had twice more refusals to comply than in the previous period. Things are getting difficult to handle for the police forces,” said Rakoto.

A 2017 law allowing French police to fire on people failing to make a traffic stop if they posed a future danger has come under severe criticism over the past week.

The law, which was passed following a spate of terror attacks in France, has been slammed as a “licence to shoot” legislation. In 2022 alone, 13 people were shot and killed by police in cases of non-compliance. While French authorities have not released the racial or ethnic identities of the victims, sociologist Sebastien Roche told a local French daily that there was an “overrepresentation of ethnic minorities among those killed during refusals to obey” police traffic stops.

When confronted with statistics of increasing cases of people in cars refusing to stop when asked to by the police, Seddiki said it was indicative of a lack of public trust in the police.

“I think what this means is that people are scared of the police more and more. People don’t think the police will be able to have a fair judgment in some situations. So they prefer to flee or face fines or be prosecuted instead of complying with a stop-and-frisk, for example, or with a traffic control. That’s something we should take into consideration because the police is meant to protect people and not scare people,” she said.

Days after Nahel’s killing shocked the nation, a law-and-order discourse has dominated the headlines following consecutive nights of rioting. It has swiftly superseded the initial expressions of outrage over the teenager’s killing. Many fear the real lessons of the tragic loss of a young life will not be learned as the numbers of police officers on duty and arrests mount – until the figures decrease and the news cycle moves on.

“What we’ve seen over the past few days is a lot of discourse about law and order, about restoring order, about how awful this violence is,” said Ariane Basthard-Bogain, a lecturer in French and politics at Northumbria University. “What we haven’t heard is a discussion of the structural causes of all of this and a long-term solution from it by the authorities. So, it’s very much framed as a violent uprising. But what we really need to focus on is why it was created in the first place.

That is a question the French establishment has been reluctant to address since a world war, a genocide and anti-colonial struggles shook the country in the previous century, locking the nation in an official equality that overlooks the experiences of many minorities today.

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#Teens #killing #raises #French #policing #issue #named

Would reparations lead to irresponsible spending? Studies on other cash windfalls suggest not, new report says.

Post By Stock article_normal, banking, Banking/Credit, C&E Industry News Filter, californiareparationstaskforce, civil liberties, community, Content Types, corporate, Corporate/Industrial News, credit, discrimination, Economic News, economic performance, Economic Performance/Indicators, employment, employment cost, Employment Cost/Productivity Figures, Employment/Unemployment Figures, Factiva Filters, Financial Investment Services, Financial Services, Financial Technology, General Labor Issues, general news, Human rights, Human Rights/Civil Liberties, indicators, industrial news, investing, Investing/Securities, labor, Labor/Personnel, market research, Marketing, Markets, Markets/Marketing, Personal Finance, Personnel, political, Political/General News, private banking, Private Banking/Wealth Management, productivity figures, racism, Racism/Xenophobia, reparations, sandydarity, securities, Social issues, society, Society/Community, Technology, unemployment figures, wealth management, xenophobia

The perception that people often succumb to misfortune and bad decision-making after suddenly receiving large amounts of cash isn’t based in fact, researchers said in a report published Thursday by the Roosevelt Institute, a progressive think tank.

That means potential reparations payouts to Black Americans are unlikely to result in reckless spending, financial ruin and reduced labor productivity, the report’s authors wrote after undertaking a review of prior research concerning consumer behavior after lottery windfalls and inheritances, as well as more minor cash transfers through tax refunds and guaranteed-income programs.

“There’s what we really describe as kind of an urban myth … that people who receive lottery winnings squander the money very quickly,” reparations scholar William “Sandy” Darity, a Duke University professor of public policy and economist who co-authored the report, said in an interview. “The best available evidence indicates that that’s not the case.”

Whether Black residents and descendants of enslaved people in the U.S. are owed reparative payments has been debated for centuries. But as the country has grown more economically unequal while a stubborn racial wealth gap persists, the reparations movement has picked up traction.

In California, a first-of-its-kind state task force on reparations approved a slate of recommendations for lawmakers this month that, if implemented through legislation, would potentially provide hundreds of billions of dollars in reparative monetary payments to Black Californians to address harms caused by factors including racial health disparities, housing discrimination and mass incarceration. San Francisco, which has its own reparations task force, is also considering one-time reparative payments of $5 million for eligible people.

Still, detractors say that granting reparations to Black Americans — as was done for Japanese Americans incarcerated in internment camps during World War II and, on a state level, for survivors who owned property in the town of Rosewood, Fla., before a race massacre destroyed it — is unwise.

Some argue that giving people reparative payments without requiring certain parameters or personal-finance courses could result in irresponsible spending behavior, or that reparations proposals are themselves racist in suggesting that Black people need “handouts.”

“‘One of the important things that lottery winners do with the money is that they frequently set up trust accounts or the equivalent for their children or their grandchildren.’”

— William ‘Sandy’ Darity, a leading reparations scholar

The authors of the Roosevelt Institute report, for their part, said the assumption that Black Americans would be unable to handle sudden windfalls is rooted in racism — noting the racial wealth gap wasn’t created through “defective” spending habits but through policies that pumped money into white households, including unequal land distribution and subsidies for homebuyers.

“Widely held, inaccurate, and racist beliefs about dysfunctional financial behavior of Black Americans as the foundation for racial economic inequality leads to a conclusion that monetary reparations will be ineffective in eliminating the gap,” they wrote. “According to this perspective, if eligible Black Americans do not change their financial mindset and behavior after receiving financial reparations, the act of restitution will be empty.”

How people spend lottery winnings and inheritances

Even so, there’s not really “any carefully drawn-out study of what has happened to folks who have received reparations payments,” Darity said. It’s “impossible to understand” the impacts of such programs, because there haven’t historically been “systems in place that give money directly to individuals” — allowing “anecdotal cynicism and urban mythology” to drive the narrative, the report’s authors wrote.

“The best that we could do is try to think about other types of instances in which people have received windfalls where there has been some follow-up on what the consequences have been,” Darity said.

To see how people really react when they’re granted new amounts of money, the authors examined outcomes both from people who had received “major” windfalls — ones that immediately and majorly change a person’s wealth status, like winning the lottery — and “minor” windfalls, or those that affect a person’s income but don’t meaningfully shift their wealth status, like the stimulus checks doled out earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Darity, who directs Duke University’s Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity, worked alongside the report’s lead author, Katherine Rodgers, a former research assistant at the Cook Center who currently works as a senior associate at the consulting firm Kroll, as well as Sydney A. Grissom, an analyst for BlackRock. Lucas Hubbard, an associate in research at the Cook Center, was also an author of the report.

They found that while a person’s behavior can vary based on the windfall amount and how it’s framed to the recipient, as well as their previous economic status, their reactions tend to buck stereotypes.

For example, only 11% of lottery winners quit their job in the findings of one 1987 study that examined 576 lottery winners across 12 states — and none of the people who got less than $50,000 left work, according to the Roosevelt Institute report. However, people were more likely to quit their jobs if they won a sum worth $1 million, had less education, were making under $100,000 a year, and hadn’t been in their job for more than four years.

Studies of lottery winners in other countries have found similarly muted labor responses, the report said. A separate U.S. study from 1993 of the labor effects on people who had received inheritances ranging from $25,000 to $150,000 or more also found that only a “small but statistically significant percentage of heirs left their jobs after receiving their inheritance,” with workers most likely to leave their jobs if they got a big payout.

But it’s still “less than what the stereotype would say,” Hubbard said in an interview: 4.6% of individuals quit their jobs after receiving a small inheritance of less than $25,000, compared to 18.2% of workers who got an inheritance of more than $150,000, he noted.

Instead, studies have shown that people who get windfalls may be more likely to become self-employed, participate in financial markets, save, and spend money on necessary goods like housing and transportation, the report’s authors wrote.

“One of the important things that lottery winners do with the money,” Darity said, “is that they frequently set up trust accounts or the equivalent for their children or their grandchildren.”

Small windfalls, including those offered through monthly checks from guaranteed-income pilot programs, have also been shown to be used for essentials like food and utilities without negative effects on employment. The framing of the money received can also have an effect on how it’s spent, the authors said: People who get a payout from bequests or life insurance tend to have more negative emotions about the money and will use it for more “utilitarian” purposes, according to one 2009 study.

From the archives (March 2021): Employment rose among those in California universal-income experiment, study finds

Reparations wouldn’t unleash ‘flagrant spending,’ researchers say

Despite their findings, “windfalls are not magical panaceas for all financial woes,” the authors emphasized.

For example, a 2011 study cited in the report found that among people who were already in precarious financial positions, lottery winnings delayed, rather than prevented, an eventual bankruptcy filing. Another report from 2006 found that “large inheritances led to disproportionately less saving,” the researchers noted in the Roosevelt Institute report.

“Research over the past two decades has demonstrated that their bounties are not limitless, and, crucially, that informed stewardship of received assets is still necessary (albeit, not always sufficient) to achieve and maximize long-term financial success,” the authors wrote.

But they added that reparations, particularly if “framed not as handouts but rather as reparative payments” to Black Americans, would not unleash “flagrant spending on nonessential goods” based on studies on windfalls, and could instead improve recipients’ emotional well-being and financial stability.

“Of course, the merits of making such payments should not be assessed solely on the basis of the anticipated economic effects,” the authors said. “Moreover, using the absence of evidence of this type as a justification for delaying reparative payments, such as those to Black descendants of American slavery, is inconsistent with the fact that other groups previously have received similar payments in the wake of atrocities and tragedies.”

From the archives (January 2023): How to pay for reparations in California? ‘Swollen’ wealth could replace ‘stolen’ wealth through taxes.

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#reparations #lead #irresponsible #spending #Studies #cash #windfalls #suggest #report

You Got Your Abortion Bill In My Trans Ban!

Post By Politics 5th circuit court of appeals, abortion, abortion pill, Abortion rights, abortion roundup, anti trans bills, ben hanson, blood on your hands, bodily autonomy, erin reed, fda, food and drug administration, gender affirming care, greg gianforte, hormone therapy, Human rights, jim pillen, judge james ho, louisiana, machaela cavanaugh, machaela cavanaugh filibuster, matthew kacsmaryk, megan hunt, mifepristone, molly ivins, Montana, Montana Supreme Court, Nebraska, nebraska chief medical officer, nebraska lb 574, north carolina, puberty blockers, roy cooper, supreme court, timothy tesmer, trans rights, tricia cotham, veto override, zooey zephyr

There was a hell of a lot of news just yesterday about the ongoing effort to make sure women, children, and some men too don’t get any silly ideas about having bodily autonomy, so let’s dig right in, with the reminder that the GOP’s drive to ban abortion everywhere is hugely unpopular with everyone except the hardcore anti-abortion folks who now dominate the Gruesome Orc Party.

North Carolina: GOP Lege Overrides Veto, Passes 12-Week Ban

The Republican supermajority in both houses of the North Carolina Legislature voted Tuesday to override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s recent veto, passing a ban on abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy. The veto override wouldn’t have been possible in the state House without the party switch by state Rep. Tricia Cotham, who suddenly announced in April that she had decided to become a Republican. That move cemented a two-thirds GOP majority in the House, and now we’re sure Cotham is very happy with her 30 pieces of flair from GOP donors. Back in ancient times — i.e., January of this year — Cotham cosponsored a bill that would have codified abortion rights into state law, but honestly, who remembers January any more? We have a feeling that voters may remember Cotham’s switcheroo in 2024.

Yesterday’s vote means that there are now no states south of Virginia and east of New Mexico where abortion remains legal and relatively easy to obtain. Even inside the 12-week limit, abortions in North Carolina will require a 72-hour waiting period between an initial visit and the actual provision of abortion services, even for medical abortions using mifepristone, if it remains legal. Doctors must be present when patients take the pill as well. [Politico]

National: Appeals Court Hears Abortion Pill Ban Today

The federal appeals court in New Orleans is hearing oral arguments today in the unspeakably shoddy lawsuit to reverse the FDA’s 2000 approval of the abortion drug mifepristone. The lawsuit, custom made for Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas, should have been laughed out of court from the start because the plaintiffs have no plausible standing in the case, and because the alleged “scientific” evidence that the FDA wrongly approved the drug is crap, but then, that’s the Trump judiciary we have. The case is being heard in the notoriously rightwing Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals by a three-judge panel consisting of two Trump appointees and a GW Bush appointee, all of whom have histories of supporting abortion restrictions. One of the judges, Trump appointee James Ho, called abortion a “moral tragedy” in a 2018 opinion, and you just ignore the research showing that 99 percent of women who’ve had abortions continue to believe it was the right choice even several years later. They’ve all been brainwashed to rationalize their decision, you see.

In addition to the bullshit Texas case, the appeals court will also hear the case from Washington state that ruled the FDA can’t reverse its approval of mifepristone. That case has been combined with the one from Texas. In April, the Supreme Court issued a stay on enforcement of Kacsmaryk’s ruling, meaning that mifepristone will remain available at least until the Fifth Circuit rules in the case at some point following today’s arguments. Whatever the outcome, get ready for the entire shitshow of legal uncertainty to start all over again until the case eventually gets to the Supreme Court. [NBC News / AP]

Montana: Greg Gianforte Signs Abortion Restrictions Days After State Supreme Court Upholds Abortion Rights

In Montana Tuesday, Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte body-slammed reproductive freedom by signing four anti-abortion bills, which included a 12-week ban on all dilation and evacuation abortions after 15 weeks. Other restrictions signed by Gianforte will add new regulations on clinics and restrict Medicaid coverage for abortions.

As the Montana Free Press reports, Gianforte’s approval of the abortion restrictions came just days after the Montana Supreme Court

upheld a nearly 25-year-old legal precedent allowing abortion access under the state Constitution’s right to privacy. That case, Weems v. State, found that advanced practice nurse practitioners with proper training can provide abortions in Montana and reaffirmed that women have a fundamental right “to seek abortion care from a qualified health care provider of her choosing, absent a clear demonstration of a medically acknowledged, bona fide health risk.”

But then, what does the state supreme court know about state law anyway? Gianforte issued a statement saying he was “proud to round out our legislative session with another suite of pro-life, pro-family bills that protect the lives of unborn babies in Montana,” and if your family includes anyone who thinks they need an abortion, then clearly it’s not a real family.

The legislation is likely to face a legal challenge, what with the earlier state supreme court ruling. Also, as the Montana Free Press notes, the legislation

bars “dismemberment abortion,” a nonmedical term that the legislation defines in part as “the use or prescription of any instrument, medicine, drug, or other substance or device” to intentionally terminate pregnancies and the “insertion of grasping instruments” to remove a fetus.

The law includes exceptions for the treatment of ectopic pregnancies, and for “medical emergencies,” which of course can be a dicey determination that leads to delays of any treatment until a patient is close to death. Planned Parenthood of Montana immediately filed a motion in state court Tuesday to prevent the new law from being enforced. [Montana Free Press]

Nebraska: GOP Breaks Filibuster Of Anti-Trans Bill By Adding Abortion Ban, Because Why Not Oppress Everyone?

Finally, the GOP’s two most repulsive movements to restrict human freedom merged in Nebraska yesterday, as Republicans in the state’s unicameral Legislature sought to use a ban on abortion to break the three-month filibuster against the Republicans’ attempts to ban gender-affirming care for transgender minors. Democratic state Sens. Machaela Cavanaugh and Megan Hunt (who has a trans son, aged 12) have been absolute BOSSES in their ongoing efforts to kill the anti-trans bill, refusing to allow any legislation at all to move forward until Republicans dropped it. And it worked for months, until yesterday.

Independent reporter Erin Reed reports that in the latest attempt to move the anti-trans bill, LB 574, Republican state Sen. Ben Hansen amended the bill with a ban on abortions after 12 weeks. (Really 10 weeks, since pregnancy by statute “begins” with the the patient’s last missed period.) In addition, his amendment hands all authority on rules related to healthcare for trans youth to the state’s Chief Medical Officer, who of course was appointed by the Republican Gov. Jim Pillen. Says Reed,

While some may label this as a compromise, it feels like a more radical turn. It underlines the unsettling truth that the battles over gender-affirming care and abortion rights are not separate, but rather two faces of the same coin, driven by the same factions, using the same justifications to limit access to vital care.

The amendment technically drops the part of LB 574 that forbids puberty blockers and hormone therapy, instead only banning gender-affirming surgical procedures for anyone under the age of 19. That seems like a compromise, since the vast majority of trans people don’t seek surgery until after they’re adults anyway.

Oh, but then there’s the catch: By transferring all authority to set rules on gender affirming care to the state’s Chief Medical Officer, the amendment simply shifts the banning of puberty blockers and hormone treatment from the Lege to that appointed bureaucrat, Dr. Timothy Tesmer, who will almost certainly eliminate the treatments — and would also be free to add other restrictions that weren’t in the original version of LB 574. Sneaky, huh?

The amended bill moved forward last night in a procedural vote that broke the filibuster by a single vote.

Sen. Cavanaugh this morning gave a powerful speech evoking the words of Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr, condemning the dishonest tactics used by Republicans in forcing an end to the filibuster by combining two Republican obsessions, punishing women for having sex, and punishing trans people for existing:

u201cSenator Cavanaugh channeling Rep. Zephyr today in today’s hearing after Republicans cheated to pass a 10 week abortion ban and gender affirming care, to pass it through and break a filibuster.nn”You WILL have blood on your hands if you vote for this! You’ll have buckets.”u201d

— Erin Reed (@Erin Reed)
1684290807

“You literally have to cheat at every moment of this debate. In every possible way, you are cheating. […]

“Women will die. Children are dying. It is your fault. It is your fault! And you are allowing it to happen. You DO literally have blood on your hands, and if you vote for this you will have buckets and buckets of blood on your hands.”

After a final round of debate today, the combined measure is likely to pass — and then the fight to protect trans young people’s lives will shift to the courts. Sen. Hunt noted minutes ago on Twitter that she’s already getting death threats, but she’s not afraid. The more the bastards attack people’s rights to be themselves and to have autonomy over their own bodies, the more they will lose. She also eloquently pointed out that the Nebraska case makes clear once and for all that these are not separate issues (and for that matter, neither are the attacks on schools and libraries).

u201cTrans rights are directly tied to the greater fight for reproductive rights and bodily autonomy – we are all in this fight together, no one is siloed away from being impacted by the rollback of our collective rights. nnWhat’s happening in Nebraska is proof.u201d

— Senator Megan Hunt (@Senator Megan Hunt)
1684335866

“Trans rights are directly tied to the greater fight for reproductive rights and bodily autonomy – we are all in this fight together, no one is siloed away from being impacted by the rollback of our collective rights.

“What’s happening in Nebraska is proof.”

Americans are not going to stand for this, and we all need to come together to protect our rights. Get ready for a long fight, and organize, organize, organize. We’ll close with a prayer from Rev. Molly Ivins, from her final column. She was talking about the Iraq War and George W. Bush, but it applies here, today, just as well; just substitute “women and trans kids” for “troops” and it’s right on target:

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we’re for them. […] We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, “Stop it, now!”

Amen.

[Erin in the Morning / Omaha World-Herald / Photo: Ted Eytan, Creative Commons License 2.0]

Yr Wonkette is funded by reader donations. If you can, please give $5 or $10 a month so we can help keep all of us in the fight for sanity and justice. We can’t let freedom be lost, especially not to such ridiculous, mean-spirited assholes.

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#Abortion #Bill #Trans #Ban

Iranian journalists remain imprisoned for reporting on Mahsa Amini’s death

Post By World Asia / Pacific, Features, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, Human rights, Iran, Mahsa Amini, media

Issued on: 03/05/2023 – 20:51

Iran is one of the most repressive countries in terms of press freedom, according to an annual report released Wednesday by Reporters Without Borders, which ranked it 177th of 180 nations. Since the September 2022 death of Mahsa Amini in police custody in Tehran, 72 journalists have been arrested and 25 remain imprisoned, most of them women. FRANCE 24 takes a look at the cases of two journalists who remain behind bars over their reporting on the young Kurdish woman’s death.

Two distraught parents embraced in the empty corridor of a hospital in Kasra, Tehran. They had just learned that their 22-year-old daughter Mahsa Amini had died, three days after being arrested by the morality police for “improperly” wearing her hijab.

Journalist Niloofar Hamedi has been held for more than seven months by the Iranian authorities for capturing this silent moment in a photograph and making it public. A correspondent for the reformist daily newspaper “Shargh”, Hamedi was the first to break the news of the young Kurdish woman’s death on September 16, 2022, by posting the photograph on Twitter.

The post provoked an unprecedented wave of unrest and several months of demonstrations against the Iranian authorities.

Arrested at her home by intelligence agents on September 20, the 31-year-old journalist was not given a trial before being put behind bars, according to Jonathan Dagher, head of the Middle East Office of Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières or RSF), which published its annual report on press freedom on Wednesday.

Journalist Elahe Mohammadi, 35, is also being held at Qarchak prison south of Tehran. A writer for the reformist daily newspaper “Hammihan”, she was arrested on September 29 for going to Amini’s home town of Saqez in Iranian Kurdistan to cover the young woman’s funeral, which gave rise to the first demonstrations following her death.

The Iranian judiciary confirmed in April that the two women were indicted on charges including collaborating with the United States, undermining national security and spreading anti-state propaganda. The two women were formally accused in October of being agents for the CIA.

#Iran: après 7 mois de détention, Niloofar Hamedi & Elahe Mohammadi ont été informées des charges pesant contre elles: “collaboration”, “complot & rébellion contre la sécurité nationale”, “propagande”. RSF dénonce des accusations grotesques & exige la liberation des journalistes. pic.twitter.com/1ZnXmXif0V

— RSF (@RSF_inter) April 27, 2023

Symbols of the ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ movement

Denouncing these “grotesque accusations”, RSF has demanded the release of the two journalists. In Iran, charges of espionage are punishable by death.

Hamedi and Mohammadi’s cases are of particular concern: “Both have become emblematic of the repression of press freedom in Iran, but also of the (Women, Life, Freedom) movement. They are journalists and women. So they are symbols on many levels. That’s why the Iranian government treats them much more severely,” says Dagher. “Iran tends to punish journalists who are the first to reveal information more severely, and make an example of them for other women and journalists,” adds Dagher.

Nine other female journalists are being held by the authorities, including eight arrested since the uprising that followed Amini’s death. “This is unprecedented in the country and one of the highest figures in the world,” says Dagher, noting that female journalists are being targeted “because they play an important role in covering this movement, especially in giving a voice to women who are at the forefront of the protest”.

RSF says a total of 72 Iranian journalists have been arrested since Amini’s death on September 16, with 25 still behind bars. The incarcerations earn Iran seventh place among the countries detaining the most journalists, with China in the top spot followed by Myanmar, Vietnam, Belarus, Turkey and Syria.

Released but under pressure

But even for released journalists, “deliverance can become a threat in itself, with sentences that act like swords of Damocles hanging over their heads”, says Dagher.

This is the case for Nazila Maroofian, another female journalist who investigated Amini’s death. She was sentenced without trial to a two-year suspended prison term for “spreading false news” and “anti-government propaganda” after spending 71 days in prison. Maroofian, who is from the same city as Amini, was targeted by the Iranian authorities for publishing an interview with her father on the news website “Mostaghel Online”.

۱۹ دیماه

از همه کسانیکه در این مدت همراه و همدل با خانواده و دوستانم بودند، ممنونم و دست همتون رو میبوسم.

پ‌ن: اکانت قبلی به دلیل مشخص فعلا برنگشته. pic.twitter.com/UCmr8IE3mD

— Nazila Maroofian|نازیلا معروفیان (@maroofian_n) January 12, 2023

Others were released in exchange for signed confessions – “statements of remorse”, or promises not to cover certain events or stories – reports RSF.

One of these journalists was Ali Pourtabatabaei, who worked for a local news website in Qom, located 140km south of Tehran, and was one of the first to reveal that young girls were being poisoned using an unidentified gas in schools across the city in November 2022.

Pourtabatabaei was arrested on March 5 amid controversy over the ongoing wave of poisonings. After several weeks in detention, “on the day of his release, the government asked journalists not to cover this story because it was upsetting the public, demanding that they rely only on official sources for all information”, says Dagher.

Under these conditions, many Iranian journalists have been forced to flee the country. To manage the influx and provide assistance, RSF set up a crisis unit. Several have since settled in France, others in Canada, the United States and Turkey. But even there they are not safe from intimidation.

“Their families continue to be pressured in Iran,” says Dagher, who has collected several personal accounts to this effect. Other journalists have been informed by foreign intelligence services that they are potential kidnapping targets and so have been strongly advised not to travel to countries bordering Iran, including Turkey.

This article has been translated from the original in French.

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#Iranian #journalists #remain #imprisoned #reporting #Mahsa #Aminis #death

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Symbols of the ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ movement

Released but under pressure