Amnesty International

retaliation by Modi, had to pull staff out of india 9/20

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Amnesty report finds Facebook amplified hate ahead of Rohingya massacre in Myanmar

World Sep 29, 2022

With roosters crowing in the background as he speaks from the crowded refugee camp in Bangladesh that’s been his home since 2017, Maung Sawyeddollah, 21, describes what happened when violent hate speech and disinformation targeting the Rohingya minority in Myanmar began to spread on Facebook.

“We were good with most of the people there. But some very narrow minded and very nationalist types escalated hate against Rohingya on Facebook,” he said. “And the people who were good, in close communication with Rohingya. changed their mind against Rohingya and it turned to hate.”

For years, Facebook, now called Meta Platforms Inc., pushed the narrative that it was a neutral platform in Myanmar that was misused by malicious people, and that despite its efforts to remove violent and hateful material, it unfortunately fell short. That narrative echoes its response to the role it has played in other conflicts around the world, whether the 2020 election in the U.S. or hate speech in India.

But a new and comprehensive report by Amnesty International states that Facebook’s preferred narrative is false. The platform, Amnesty says, wasn’t merely a passive site with insufficient content moderation. Instead, Meta’s algorithms “proactively amplified and promoted content” on Facebook, which incited violent hatred against the Rohingya beginning as early as 2012.

Despite years of warnings, Amnesty found, the company not only failed to remove violent hate speech and disinformation against the Rohingya, it actively spread and amplified it until it culminated in the 2017 massacre. The timing coincided with the rising popularity of Facebook in Myanmar, where for many people it served as their only connection to the online world. That effectively made Facebook the internet for a vast number of Myanmar’s population.

More than 700,000 Rohingya fled into neighboring Bangladesh that year. Myanmar security forces were accused of mass rapes, killings and torching thousands of homes owned by Rohingya.

“Meta — through its dangerous algorithms and its relentless pursuit of profit — substantially contributed to the serious human rights violations perpetrated against the Rohingya,” the report says.

A spokesperson for Meta declined to answer questions about the Amnesty report. In a statement, the company said it “stands in solidarity with the international community and supports efforts to hold the Tatmadaw accountable for its crimes against the Rohingya people.”

“Our safety and integrity work in Myanmar remains guided by feedback from local civil society organizations and international institutions, including the U.N. Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar; the Human Rights Impact Assessment we commissioned in 2018; as well as our ongoing human rights risk management,” Rafael Frankel, director of public policy for emerging markets, Meta Asia-Pacific, said in a statement.

Like Sawyeddollah, who is quoted in the Amnesty report and spoke with the AP on Tuesday, most of the people who fled Myanmar — about 80% of the Rohingya living in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine at the time — are still staying in refugee camps. And they are asking Meta to pay reparations for its role in the violent repression of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, which the U.S. declared a genocide earlier this year.

Amnesty’s report, out Wednesday, is based on interviews with Rohingya refugees, former Meta staff, academics, activists and others. It also relied on documents disclosed to Congress last year by whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook data scientist. It notes that digital rights activists say Meta has improved its civil society engagement and some aspects of its content moderation practices in Myanmar in recent years. In January 2021, after a violent coup overthrew the government, it banned the country’s military from its platform.

But critics, including some of Facebook’s own employees, have long maintained such an approach will never truly work. It means Meta is playing whack-a-mole trying to remove harmful material while its algorithms designed to push “engaging” content that’s more likely to get people riled up essentially work against it.

“These algorithms are really dangerous to our human rights. And what happened to the Rohingya and Facebook’s role in that specific conflict risks happening again, in many different contexts across the world,” said Pat de Brún, researcher and adviser on artificial intelligence and human rights at Amnesty.

“The company has shown itself completely unwilling or incapable of resolving the root causes of its human rights impact.”

After the U.N.’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar highlighted the “significant” role Facebook played in the atrocities perpetrated against the Rohingya, Meta admitted in 2018 that “we weren’t doing enough to help prevent our platform from being used to foment division and incite offline violence.”

In the following years, the company “touted certain improvements in its community engagement and content moderation practices in Myanmar,” Amnesty said, adding that its report “finds that these measures have proven wholly inadequate.”

In 2020, for instance, three years after the violence in Myanmar killed thousands of Rohingya Muslims and displaced 700,000 more, Facebook investigated how a video by a leading anti-Rohingya hate figure, U Wirathu, was circulating on its site.

The probe revealed that over 70% of the video’s views came from “chaining” — that is, it was suggested to people who played a different video, showing what’s “up next.” Facebook users were not seeking out or searching for the video, but had it fed to them by the platform’s algorithms.

Wirathu had been banned from Facebook since 2018.

“Even a well-resourced approach to content moderation, in isolation, would likely not have sufficed to prevent and mitigate these algorithmic harms. This is because content moderation fails to address the root cause of Meta’s algorithmic amplification of harmful content,” Amnesty’s report says.

The Rohingya refugees are seeking unspecified reparations from the Menlo Park, California-based social media giant for its role in perpetuating genocide. Meta, which is the subject of twin lawsuits in the U.S. and the U.K. seeking $150 billion for Rohingya refugees, has so far refused.

“We believe that the genocide against Rohingya was possible only because of Facebook,” Sawyeddollah said. “They communicated with each other to spread hate, they organized campaigns through Facebook. But Facebook was silent.”

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facebook meta genocide myanmarr india modi

[### Myanmar: Facebook's systems promoted violence against ...

Amnesty International

https://www.amnesty.org › Latest › News › 2022 › 09](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/)

Sep 29, 2022 — Myanmar: Facebook's systems promoted violence against Rohingya; Meta owes reparations ... Genocide Convention based on Myanmar's treatment ...

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The global human rights group Amnesty International on Tuesday called on supporters of the United States' core constitutional rights to write to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, demanding that the Trump administration stop its campaign to strip foreign students of their right to be in the country for exercising their First Amendment freedoms.

As Common Dreamsreported Tuesday, since Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) accosted former Columbia University student organizer Mahmoud Khalil, forced him into an unmarked vehicle, and took him to a detention center in Louisiana thousands of miles from his pregnant wife in March, the administration's attacks on international students have only intensified.

Seven identified students have had their visas revoked, while the administration is pushing to revoke the residency status of at least two students who protested the U.S.-backed Israeli assault on Gaza.

The White House is using a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act to claim that certain students including Khalil pose a threat to U.S. foreign policy and should be deported.

"At least 1,300 additional students are known to have had their visas revoked," reads a letter template provided to supporters by Amnesty. "However, many of these students never received notice of the revocation, nor did they participate in any protest or expressive activity on campus. Some students may have been targeted due to having committed minor crimes such as traffic violations. According to a lawsuit filed on behalf of students, many were targeted because of their country of origin, particularly those from African, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and Asian backgrounds."

IFrame Content

Supporters who send the letter can urge Noem to "restore the visas and immigration status of these students and visitors, release all students from immigration detention, refrain from deporting any of them, and end the targeting of students based on their immigration statuses and for exercising their human rights."

"According to a lawsuit filed on behalf of students, many were targeted because of their country of origin, particularly those from African, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and Asian backgrounds."

As Common Dreamsreported, President Donald Trump's attacks on foreign students' First Amendment rights and his threats to universities' funding if they don't comply with his policies aimed at rooting out criticism of U.S. policy in Israel and Palestine, which both Republican and Democratic politicians have claimed is synonymous with antisemitism, have pushed schools to notify hundreds of students that their visas were revoked.

Trump's attacks on international students have shocked several federal judges, and one judge in Georgia on Friday ordered ICE to restore the legal status of students whose visas were revoked due to DHS' termination of their records in the Student Exchange and Visitor Information System (SEVIS).

DHS admitted in a court filing last week that it does not have the authority to change students' visa status via SEVIS.

"These repressive tactics and the summary revocation of people's immigration status," said Amnesty, "whether due to their speech and protest activities or their country of origin, demonstrate an utter lack of respect for their human rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, due process, and to be free from discrimination."

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/fears-of-violence-and-voter-intimidation-grow-as-election-day-draws-closer-reports/

alex h

the 2020 presidential election will go down in history as one that was even more volatile than the 1968 election, and many Americans have been expressing fears that violence and voter intimidation will occur on Election Day. That fear is addressed in new articles by the Washington Post, Time and USA Today.

Journalist Mark Berman, in the Post, reports that law enforcement are preparing for the worst.

"Tens of millions of Americans have cast ballots at early-voting sites, and tensions and accusations of voter intimidation have already flared up during this process," Berman explains. "Many Americans still plan to turn out on Election Day; so, law enforcement officials have conducted drills involving multiple agencies to try to game out what could happen. Police officials in multiple cities stressed that they have no information about specific threats relating to the election, but are instead preparing to make sure they are ready."

Andrew Walsh, a deputy chief for the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, told the Post, "I don't think we've seen anything like this in modern times…. When you look at previous elections, there's always been the concern when you have large crowds…. We know (that) can be a target for someone who has an agenda."

David Brown, a superintendent for the Chicago Police Department, told the Post, "We are all in conversations with our counterparts across the country about what we might expect. But everything is uncertain, and so, we're trying as best we can to anticipate any hazard that might happen." And Washington D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham noted, "It is widely believed that there will be civil unrest after the November election regardless of who wins."

Reporter Melissa Chan, in Time, reports that police departments around the U.S. expect to be on high alert on Election Day.

Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based think tank the Police Executive Research Forum, told Time, "It's fair to say the police are preparing in ways they never would have had to for Election Day. This year is unlike any other year."

According to Chan, "The presence of militia groups at polls could pose real safety concerns in light of a new :{Amnesty International:(style="background-color:#ff0000;"):}::{ report:(style="background-color:#ffcc66;"):}: that said U.S. law enforcement failed to protect peaceful protesters from violent attacks by armed vigilante groups and counterprotesters in nearly 200 cases from May to September. The report, released Friday, said law enforcement often neglected to deploy an adequate amount of trained officers, separate or deescalate tensions between opposing groups and often harmed peaceful protesters while dealing with violent ones."

In USA Today, journalistTrevor Hughes addresses fears that far-right extremists will resort to acts of voter intimidation on Election Day — and that Black voters will be among their targets.

The NAACP's Stephanie Owens told USA Today, "The symbolism of who you're supporting is a very large component of our election tradition, but there is almost nothing traditional about this election. People are already being targeted based on the candidates they are supporting."

The Rev. Carl Day, a Philadelphia-based pastor and liberal/progressive activist, has been warning the Black community that they could be targeted for voter intimidation. Day told USA Today, "When the president of the United States seems like he's inciting a demographic of people to be on standby and he's saying he might not leave office, it brings legitimate fears to people. It's in a lot of conversations in a lot of rooms I'm in."

Carolyn Gallaher, a professor at American University's School of International Service in Washington, D.C., told USA Today, "Everyone I know is concerned both about voter intimidation at the polls and potential violence as we get results from the election — and sort of what that might look like not just around the election, but between the election and the inauguration."

Gallagher fears that the far right will resort to violence whether Trump wins reelection or is defeated by former Vice President Joe Biden. The American University professor told USA Today, "The violence will occur either way. If Biden wins, it will be an excuse to try to delegitimize the results and to go after perceived enemies on the left — and of course, that means labeling pretty much anyone that you disagree with Antifa. But I worry, too, if Trump wins, this will be a signal to these far-right groups that have supported him — extremist groups like the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, other groups like this — that they will see this is like open season to go after people that have been opponents of Trump."

fashy

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/state-department-plan-to-declare-human-rights-groups-anti-semitic-slammed-as-desperate-and-obscene/

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State Department plan to declare human rights groups 'anti-semitic' slammed as 'desperate' and 'obscene'

Brett Wilkins and Common Dreams October 22, 2020

The Trump administration is considering designating several preeminent international human rights groups "anti-Semitic" in response to their criticism of Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people, according to a report published Wednesday.

Politico reports the State Department could as early as this week declare groups including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Oxfam to be anti-Semitic organizations and urge world governments to stop supporting them.

A congressional aide told Politico that the move is backed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who reportedly has presidential aspirations and is burnishing his Zionist credentials while serving in what is arguably the most pro-Israel administration ever.

The proposal is highly controversial, however, and has raised eyebrows and ire among career State Department officials including attorneys who argue the potential designation poses serious free speech concerns.

The declaration would likely take the form of a report from Elan Carr, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. It would likely cite the groups' criticism of Israeli policies and actions, as well as their actual or perceived support for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), the peaceful global protest movement for Palestinian rights that is backed by prominent Jewish peace groups. None of the targeted organizations officially support BDS.

Carr's report is expected to cite posts, reports, and media statements by the rights groups criticizing Israel's ongoing illegal occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, as well as the exclusively Jewish settler colonization of Palestinian territory, which is also illegal under international law. Both the occupation and settlements have been the subject of dozens of United Nations resolutions, most of them condemning Israel's actions.

Settlement building and expansion have also been called a form of ethnic cleansing and apartheid by international observers, icluding over 400 Jewish scholars and the former U.N. human rights official Richard Falk—who is also Jewish.

It is unclear what, if any, impact the proposed anti-Semitic designation would have on the rights groups. None of the three named groups receive any funding from the U.S. government. All three categorically deny accusations of anti-Semitism.

"AIUSA is deeply committed to fighting anti-Semitism and all forms of hate worldwide, and will continue to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth, and dignity are denied," Amnesty International USA iterim director Bob Goodfellow said in a statement. "We vigorously contest any allegation of anti-Semitism, and look forward to addressing the State Department's attacks in full."

Eric Goldstein, an official with HRW, said in a statement that his organization "fight[s] discrimination in all forms, including anti-Semitism."

"Criticizing government policy is not the same as attacking a specific group of people," added Goldstein. "For example, our critiques of U.S. government policy do not make us anti-American."

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/policing-the-digital-frontiers-is-india-weaponizing-technology-to-silence-civil-society/

on June 15, 2020, Amnesty International andCitizen Lab, an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, uncovered a coordinated spyware campaign that targetednine Indian human rights defenders between January to October 2019.

In the world’s largest democracy, these types of incidents are a concern especially when viewed alongside the government’s broader crackdown on dissent. Under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led government, India has gained global notoriety forsilencing critical voices throughfrivolous defamation suits,arrests and detentions of citizens engaging in peaceful protests, and theimprisonment of journalists.

The activists were sent multiple emails, containing links to malicious software, disguised as important communications. If downloaded, the software would infect a user’s phone or computer withNetWire, a piece of commoditymalware designed to cause extensive damage to data and systems or to gain unauthorized access to a network.

Eight of the individuals targeted had been calling for the release of those indicted in the Bhima Koregaon case dating back to 2018 when, in the wake of violent attacks against Dalit communities in Maharashtra, police arrested several activists known for their advocacy work on behalf of these communities.

Unanswered questions about Pegasus in India

Three of the individuals targeted with Netwire were also targeted earlier in 2019 in the now infamous NSO WhatsApp hack, a spyware attack in which at least two dozen academics, lawyers, Dalit activists and journalists in India were targeted with Pegasus), a spyware that canextract a user’s private data, including passwords, contact lists, calendar events, text messages, and even voice calls. Some variants of it can even turn on a phone’s camera and microphone to capture activity in the phone’s vicinity.

The individuals were informed about this attack by Whatsapp, who contacted and alerted them that their phones had been under state-of-the-art surveillance for a two-week period in May 2019. This hack was part of a wider attack that targeted at least 100 members of civil society around the world and led to Whatsapp suing the NSO group in a US court.

Following the revelation of the Pegasus attacks in November 2019, NSO defended itself saying that it only sells its technology to “licensed government intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Consequently, several of those targeted in India wrote to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology asking whether the government had authorized the use of this spyware. Unfortunately, the Indian government’s Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Information Technology refused to give a straight answer to this question, only claiming that “no unauthorized interception” had taken place. Subsequently, the government sought to shift the blame on Whatsapp, insinuating that the tech platform had allowed the breach to take place and had not informed it about it. Embarrassingly, Whatsapp responded stating that it actually had informed the country’s nodal cyber response agency when the attacks had first taken place.

Illegally intercepting or accessing computer devices is recognized as a criminal act under international law and India’s Information Technology Act. If the hackers were private actors, it is concerning as to why the Indian government has not yet released details of any criminal investigations against them, despite sufficient evidence of a crime having been committed against its own citizens. The alternative scenario, if it happens to be true, is doubly concerning. State surveillance through the use of spyware not only violates India’s own laws around the interception of private communications but also poses a huge threat to free expression, privacy and freedom of thought.

BJP surveillance measures

While less invasive forms of surveillance have been used by different ruling powers through the decades in India, the BJP’s measures are excessive, to say the least. In December 2018, the Ministry of Home Affairsgave ten agencies blanket legal authority “to intercept, monitor or decrypt information generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer.” This order was challenged in the Supreme Court to which the governmentresponded with a statement that “the veil of privacy can be lifted for legitimate state interest.” The order continues to be enforced, pending a final judgement by the apex court.

In May 2020, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting floated and closed a bid for a tool to provide “fact verification and disinformation detection on social media platforms.” According tomedia reports, this was the eighth attempt by this government, since it came into power in 2014, to “explicitly and directly monitor social media”. This latest attempt at mass surveillance is currently being**challenged**in court by the Internet Freedom Foundation. Given the Supreme Court’s 2017 ruling on privacy being a fundamental right, there is hope that this attempt too will be thwarted.

It is important to note that these attempts to monitor citizens’ lives are being made in the absence of a personal data protection law, which if enacted in line with international human rights standards, could offer some protection against these repeated attempts at surveillance. Unfortunately, the data protection bill introduced by the BJP-led government in 2019, which is currently undergoing joint parliamentary review, fails to meet such standards. It seeks to give the government unrestricted access to personal data on vaguely worded grounds of sovereignty, violating key legal safeguards around necessity and proportionality, as enshrined in international law and recognized by the Indian Supreme Court as intrinsic to safeguarding the right to privacy. There are further concerns that this is a backdoor attempt to provide legislative backing to the State’s passive surveillance activities online, which are currently conducted outside the remit of the law, merely through executive action, and thus escape meaningful oversight. Understandably, the bill has faced massive pushback from civil society, and even the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Privacy has expressed concern.

A global trend

These attempts to monitor and police digital spaces are not unique to India alone –digital authoritarianism is on the rise around the world, especially in countries where rising nationalism, combined with weaker rule of law has emboldened governments to crackdown on dissent, increasingly with the aid of technology supplied by dubious corporations eager to make a quick buck.

Spyware, one of the most invasive surveillance tools, has managed to evade regulation at the international level so far, largely because surveillance is a topic that governments are not keen to discuss, mostly due to diplomatic, political and national security reasons. Consequently, the lack of an international framework to regulate its production, sale and use coupled with an increasing interest by repressive regimes in the private lives of their critics, has led to an uptick in the use of spyware, as tracked by Citizen Lab. Concerned by this troubling trend, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression released a report, calling on governments to “establish an immediate moratorium on the global sale and transfer of private surveillance technology until rigorous human rights safeguards are put in place to regulate such practices and guarantee that governments and non-State actors use the tools in legitimate ways”. The US State Department has also released guidance to “assist U.S. companies seeking to prevent their products or services with surveillance capabilities from being misused by foreign government end-users to commit human rights abuses.”

These are steps in the right direction, which have taken effect largely due to the tireless advocacy done by civil society organizations who are bravely calling out human rights abuses, pushing for rights-respecting legislation and engaging in strategic litigation. Countries seeking to prevent the decline of democracy must support these groups, in India and elsewhere, by engaging them as trusted partners in the fight to keep the internet equal, open and free.

Written by Ayesha Khan

This postoriginally appeared on Global Voices

mind you, human rights violations in ICE covid, baby jails and secret police in portland

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/pompeo-panels-human-rights-report-pushes-radical-isolationist-anti-rights-anti-scientific-religious-agenda/

~ Amnesty int'l

Human rights advocates denounced as “dangerous” a draft report released Thursday by the U.S. State Department’s controversial Commission on Unalienable Rights that paintsproperty rightsand religious liberty as “foremost among the unalienable rights that government is established to secure” while casting doubt on other liberties, including reproductive freedom.

“Make no mistake: this report was not designed with principles of equality, justice, and rights in mind. Instead, it serves as another stepping stone in the White House’s radical, isolationist, anti-rights, anti-scientific, religious agenda,” Serra Sippel, president of the Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE), said in a statement.

“The Commission on Unalienable Rights is a thinly veiled religious fundamentalist panel, and the people on it should have absolutely no say about the human rights of people all over the world,” Sippel declared, calling the panel “a dangerous distraction from the fact that this administration does not believe that all people are equal and entitled to human rights."

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"This administration has shown time and time again that their concern with human rights is not about defining rights; it has to do with whose rights are being protected,” she added. “And when it comes to women and girls, and LGBTQI persons, equal protection of our human rights is not guaranteed under this administration, and this commission is just another attempt to deny women and others their rights.”

Critics of the commission, including CHANGE, have soughtto disband it with a lawsuit arguing that the biased views of its members could advance discrimination against certain groups. The panel was announced in July 2019 by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who unveiled its new report in a speech in Philadelphia Thursday, introduced by Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, who chairs the commission.

The commissioners write in the report that they, “like our fellow Americans, are not of one mind on many issues where there are conflicting interpretations of human rights claims—abortion, affirmative action, and capital punishment, to name a few.”

The panel’s treatment of reproductive rights in the report drew a rebuke from Planned Parenthood Action on Twitter Friday:...

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/buried-in-the-trump-netanyahu-deal-is-an-effort-to-torpedo-a-war-crimes-investigation/

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Buried in the Trump-Netanyahu deal is an effort to ‘torpedo’ a war crimes investigation

[President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence participate in an expanded bilateral meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday, Jan. 27, 2020, in the Oval Office of the White House. (Official White House Photo by D. Myles Cullen)]

Written by Andrea Germanos / Common Dreams January 29, 2020

As the International Criminal Court moved forward this week with its investigation into alleged war crimes committed against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, the White House’s new so-called “peace” plan includes a largely unreported provision that would end such efforts to hold the Israeli government to account.

The document, released Tuesday, was widely criticized as a “screw the Palestinians over harder non-peace plan” that lets Israel continue its illegal occupation and a “ludicrous” proposal that offers no path towards Palestinian statehood.

The plan’s architect, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and White House advisor Jared Kushner, suggested Palestinians “take a cold shower” and accept it lest they “screw up,” he said, like with “every other opportunity that they’ve ever had in their existence.”

A portion of the document states that “the parties should conduct themselves in a manner that comports with this vision, and in a way that prepares their respective peoples for peace.” For the Palestinians, that means victims of war crimes should keep quiet.

The plan states, in part, that Palestinians must take “no action, and shall dismiss all pending actions, against the State of Israel, the United States, and any of their citizens before the International Criminal Court” and other tribunals.

A portion of the White House's "Peace to Prosperity" plan released Jan. 28, 2020.

The provision drew criticism from Amnesty International.

“A just and sustainable peace requires a plan that prioritizes the human rights of Palestinians and Israelis, and must include justice and reparation for victims of war crimes and other grave violations. This plan not only fails this fundamental test; it seeks to torpedo efforts towards justice for both Palestinians and Israelis that are currently under way,” said Philip Luther, the organization’s Middle East and North Africa research and advocacy director.

Netanyahu, who was indicted Tuesday on corruption charges and stood alongside Trump as he released the plan, reiterated his condemnation of the ICC this week.

In an interview set to air Thursday with Christian network TBN, he called on global powers to sanction the court over the probe.

“The U.S. government, under President Trump, has spoken forcefully against the ICC for this travesty, and I urge all your viewers to do the same. To ask for concrete actions, sanction against the international court, its officials, prosecutors, everyone,” he said, according to an excerpt of the interview released by the Israeli government.

The internation court, he continued, is “basically in a full-frontal attack on the democracies, both on the democracies’ right to defend themselves, and on Israel’s right, the Jewish people’s right, to live in their ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel.”

Michael Lynk, the U.N. special rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, has a different perspective. In December, Lynk praised the possibility of justice the investigation could bring.

“Over the years, the international community has adopted hundreds of resolutions through the United Nations condemning various features of Israel’s entrenched occupation of the Palestinian territory. Yet rarely has it ever combined criticism with consequences for Israel,” he said. “Now, the possibility of accountability is finally on the horizon.”

Trump has bristled at the possibility of the probe into alleged Israeli wrongdoing as well.

In a statement last April celebrating his administration’s successful intimidation campaign to stop an ICC investigation into alleged war crimes the U.S. committed in Afghanistan, Trump said, “Any attempt to target American, Israeli, or allied personnel for prosecution will be met with a swift and vigorous response.”

Despite U.S. and Israeli objections to the ICC probe into war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza, the effort—at least at this point—continues to advance.

The ICC announced Tuesday that it set a March 16 deadline for Israel, Palestine, and alleged victims to submit documents to the court.

Situation in #Palestine: #ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I invites Palestine, #Israel, interested States & others to submit observations on the Prosecutor’s request related to the scope of the Court’s territorial jurisdiction. Read more ?https://t.co/cwIfEEfY0W

— Int’l Criminal Court (@IntlCrimCourt) January 28, 2020

ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said in December that “there is a reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation into the situation in Palestine” as she was “satisfied that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip,” and “there are no substantial reasons to believe that an investigation would not serve the interests of justice.”

Amnesty International amplifies calls for clemency for Rodney Reed as Supreme Court considers case

Julia Conley / Common Dreams

As the Supreme Court debated Friday whether to take up the case of death row inmate Rodney Reed, Amnesty International demanded that Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott grant clemency in the case as…

no lnx

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/mike-pompeos-pro-women-human-rights-panel-packed-with-abortion-foes

Mike Pompeo’s ‘pro-women’ human rights panel packed with abortion foes

written by Igor Derysh / Salon July 12, 2019

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s new “pro-women” human rights commission is filled with members who have been outspoken advocates against a woman’s right to choose while praising governments accused of human rights abuses.

Pompeo announced the creation of the Commission on Unalienable Rights in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week. Advocacy groups like Amnesty Internationalimmediately accused the Trump administration of using the commission as a way to limit the scope of human rights by not using the “global framework that’s already in place.”

The 12-person commission will be chaired by Harvard professor Mary Ann Glendon, a former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican who was once honored as a “hero” of the pro-life movement. Though the State Department claims the group will not deal with abortion, according to The Daily Beast, the commission’s membership has alarmed pro-choice advocates.

“Appointing these ideologues to a commission purporting to safeguard human rights will have the opposite effect and will endanger the health and well-being of countless women,” Michelle Kuppersmith, who heads the advocacy group Equity Forward, said in a statement. “This is a clear extension of the Trump administration’s anti-women, anti-reproductive health campaign, and a blatant attempt to restrict the rights of vulnerable populations around the globe.”..

~AInt'l

Amnesty International Condemns U.S. Attacks on Border Journalists and Human Rights Defenders

Ryan Devereaux

A new Amnesty International report details a two-yearlong attack on human rights defenders, attorneys, and journalists working along the U.S.-Mexico border.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/06/07/class-0000-campaign-denounces-cowardly-censorship-student-call-climate-action

For 'Challenging Us All to Confront the Realities of the Climate Crisis,' Greta Thunberg and Fridays for Future Movement Win Amnesty's Top Human Rights Award

"This is not my award, this is everyone's award. It is amazing to see the recognition we are getting and know that we are fighting for something that is having an impact," said Thunberg

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/06/07/challenging-us-all-confront-realities-climate-crisis-greta-thunberg-and-fridays

snowden says US human rights spied on incl Am Int'l 4/14

nayirah AI punked:

1 yr later 60 min

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a televised appearance in 2016, Guaidó dismissed deaths resulting from guayas – a guarimba tactic involving stretching steel wire across a roadway in order to injure or kill motorcyclists – as a “myth.” His comments whitewashed a deadly tactic that had killed unarmed civilians like Santiago Pedroza and decapitated a man named Elvis Durán, among many others.

This callous disregard for human life would define his Popular Will party in the eyes of much of the public, including many opponents of Maduro.

Cracking down on Popular Will

As violence and political polarization escalated across the country, the government began to act against the Popular Will leaders who helped stoke it.

Freddy Guevara, the National Assembly Vice-President and second in command of Popular Will, was a principal leader in the 2017 street riots. Facing a trial for his role in the violence, Guevara took shelter in the Chilean embassy, where he remains.

Lester Toledo, a Popular Will legislator from the state of Zulia, was wanted by Venezuelan government in September 2016 on charges of financing terrorism and plotting assassinations. The plans were said to be made with former Colombian President Álavaro Uribe. Toledo escaped Venezuela and went on several speaking tours with Human Rights Watch, the US government-backed Freedom House, the Spanish Congress and European Parliament.

Carlos Graffe, another Otpor-trained Generation 2007 member who led Popular Will, was arrested in July 2017. According to police, he was in possession of a bag filled with nails, C4 explosives and a detonator. He was released on December 27, 2017.

Leopoldo Lopez, the longtime Popular Will leader, is today under house arrest, accused of a key role in deaths of 13 people during the guarimbas in 2014. Amnesty International lauded Lopez as a “prisoner of conscience” and slammed his transfer from prison to house as “not good enough.” Meanwhile, family members of guarimbavictims introduced a petition for more charges against Lopez.

Yon Goicoechea, the Koch Brothers posterboy and US-backed founder of Justice First, was arrested in 2016 by security forces who claimed they found a kilo of explosives in his vehicle. In a New York Times op-ed, Goicoechea protested the charges as “trumped-up” and claimed he had been imprisoned simply for his “dream of a democratic society, free of Communism.” He was freed in November 2017.

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amnesty int'l got punked? 12/5/18 kpfa doc?

dana frank's hist of latin am?

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/21/world/amnesty-human-rights-report/

rise in divisive rhetoric in mainstream global politics is threatening to roll back human rights around the world, Amnesty International says in its annual report for 2016, published on Tuesday.

Announcing the human rights report, Secretary General of Amnesty International Salil Shetty listed US President Donald Trump alongside world leaders like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, and claimed that their "divisive fear-mongering has become a dangerous force in world affairs."

"Whether it is Trump, Orban, Erdoğan or Duterte, more and more politicians calling themselves anti-establishment are wielding a toxic agenda that hounds, scapegoats and dehumanizes entire groups of people," Shetty said in a statement accompanying the report.

// https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/01/25/us-trumps-immigration-actions-harm-millions