By Tom Hall
1 February 2016
Last week, US-based watchdog group Human Rights Watch warned of mounting attacks on democratic rights throughout Europe and North America, which governments have justified as a response to the migrant crisis.
The group’s annual report warned that the arrival of refugees fleeing war and repression in the Middle East is “driving many Western governments to roll back human rights protections,” adding, “these backward steps threaten the rights of all” sections of the population, not just refugees.
In the report’s lead essay, Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth notes, “In Europe and the United States, a polarizing us-versus-them rhetoric has moved from the political fringe to the mainstream. Blatant Islamophobia and shameless demonizing of refugees have become the currency of an increasingly assertive politics of intolerance.”
“Public discourse,” Roth continues, “has been filled with voices of hatred and fear of Muslims, for whom the refugees [arriving in Europe] are surrogates.” This climate contributes to “the persistent discrimination, hopelessness, and despair that pervade neighborhoods on the outskirts of some European cities.”
2015 saw a dramatic rollback of democratic rights throughout Europe and America. In France, the Hollande government pushed through sweeping expansions of government surveillance and curtailing freedom of speech, seizing upon the attacks in Paris this November and the Charlie Hebdo attacks at the beginning of the year. In the United States, the military was deployed to Baltimore to crack down on peaceful protests against police brutality at the beginning of the year, while mass government spying continued unimpeded.
The report contains comprehensive summaries for more than 90 countries for the year of 2015. By far the largest single section, with 24 pages, is on the European Union, more than Saudi Arabia, whose absolute monarchy beheaded record numbers of people last year, including many political prisoners, and countries currently embroiled in civil wars such as Syria and Libya. The United States came in second place, with 17 pages…
…Previous agreements by European governments to resettle asylum seekers throughout the continent remain a dead letter as countries throughout Europe close off their borders to refugees. Only 159 asylum seekers have been relocated from Italy and Greece in spite of an agreement last year to resettle 160,000 asylum seekers from these countries.
Attacks on Muslims rose sharply last year, as far-right and neo-Nazi groups are emboldened by the discriminatory policies of European governments. Such attacks have grown by 46.7 percent in London in the first half of 2015. However, racist attacks are by no means limited solely to Muslims; reports of anti-Semitic attacks are also on the rise, and discriminatory evictions of Roma by governments throughout the EU continue. Widespread discrimination also exists in the Baltic countries against native Russian speakers.
As Roth notes, Europe is joined in its persecution of refugees by the United States. Last year 30 US governors tried to prevent Syrian refugees from entering their states, while current Republican front-runner Donald Trump floated the idea of banning Muslims from entering the country altogether. The United States, the report declares, also “continued the dramatic expansion of detention of migrant mothers and their children from Central America,” many fleeing violence in their home countries, over the course of last year. While not mentioned in the report, the Obama administration rang in the new year last month with a new round of targeted deportations of Central American children.
The report also notes with concern the continued drive to expand state repression and surveillance in the United States and Europe, justified in the main by the supposed threat of terrorism…
…In the United States, spy agency leaders seized upon the Paris attacks last year to renew their calls for a “back door” to online encryption, despite the fact that the Paris attackers did not encrypt their communications. Meanwhile, Guantanamo Bay’s detention center remains open despite years of empty promises by Obama to close it. And last year’s National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law by Obama, “tightened existing restrictions on the transfer of detainees out of Guantanamo,” making the release or transfer of detainees even more difficult.
Many of the worst human rights violations elsewhere in the report were committed by allies of the United States or the European imperialist powers. In discussing the Saudi-led invasion of Yemen, for example, in which civilian infrastructure has been deliberately targeted, the report argues that by virtue of providing “intelligence, logistical support and personnel” to the Saudis the United States would be “potentially jointly responsible for laws-of-war violations by coalition forces.” The report also cites continuing US aid to Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as well as the Obama administration’s waiving of provisions of the Child Soldier Prevention Act to continue supporting the militaries of several African countries.
World imperialism has justified countless criminal wars over the past quarter century under the fraudulent pretext of “humanitarian interventionism.” Now, a leading human rights group is compelled to admit that these same powers are responsible for major human rights violations within their own borders. This not only exposes imperialism’s professed concern for “human rights” as a fraud, it is also an indication of the growth of police-state forms of rule within these countries…
Excerpted; full article link: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/02/01/hrw-f01.html
September 30, 2015
“We’ve ended two wars.” — Barack Obama, July 21, 2015, at a DSCC fundraiser held at a “private residence”…
Excerpted; full article at: https://theintercept.com/2015/09/30/u-s-bombs-somehow-keep-falling-in-the-places-where-obama-boasts-he-ended-wars/
By Peter Symonds
23 May 2015
Just days after a CNN news crew joined a P8-A Poseidon surveillance aircraft over a Chinese-administered islet in the South China Sea, it is clear the flight was a calculated provocation aimed at ramping up pressure on China. American officials immediately exploited the reportage to underline Washington’s determination to challenge Chinese territorial claims in these key strategic waters, regardless of the consequences…
Article’s original title: “US prepares new military provocations in South China Sea”
Article link: http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/05/23/scse-m23.html
RELATED ARTICLES:
“Beijing strongly protests against US spy plane encounter” [China Daily] – http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2015-05/22/content_20794899.htm
“US prepares to challenge China in the South China Sea” [World Socialist Website] – http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/05/21/scse-m21.html
“Is the US planning a “Gulf of Tonkin” incident in the South China Sea?” [World Socialist Website] – http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/05/18/pers-m18.html
GENEVA, April 24 (Xinhua) — The United Nations Human Rights chief on Friday urged authorities in Britain, media and regulatory bodies to take steps to curb incitement to hatred, in the wake of a recent article in The Sun newspaper calling migrants “cockroaches.”
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, also called on all European countries to take a firmer line on racism and xenophobia which he said often feeds a vicious cycle of vilification, intolerance and politicization of migrants under the guise of freedom of expression.
“This vicious verbal assault on migrants and asylum seekers in the British tabloid press has continued unchallenged under the law for far too long,” he said, adding that while he was an unswerving advocate of freedom of expression, the right was not absolute.
Zeid said the tabloid press was “sapping compassion for the thousands of people fleeing conflict, human rights violations and economic deprivation who are drowning in the Mediterranean.”
“The nasty underbelly of racism may also risk making the crisis even worse, and could sadly result in further massive loss of life,” he added.
Zeid noted that the Sun article was simply one of the more extreme examples of thousands of anti-foreigner articles that have appeared in UK tabloids over the past two decades.
The High Commissioner noted that “while migration and refugee issues are completely valid topics for public debate, it is imperative that migration policy decisions that affect people’s lives and fundamental human rights should be made on the basis of fact — not fiction, exaggeration or blatant xenophobia.”
Earlier this week a British NGO, the Society of Black Lawyers, reported The Sun to Britain’s Metropolitan Police and requested the matter be investigated under the 1986 Public Order Act to see whether the article amounts to incitement to racial hatred.
Editor: Mu Xuequan
Article original title: “Stop inciting hatred against migrants: UN human rights chief”
Article link: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-04/24/c_134182685.htm
May.2,2015
On May 1, 125th International Workers’ Day, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) organized the largest ever gathering for the holiday – with around 150,000 people attending – and expressed their opposition to government plans to restructure the labor market.
At 3 pm, about 50,000 members of the KCTU gathered for a demonstration at Seoul Plaza, with the city deploying an estimated 22,000 riot police. The KCTU members urged the government to stop its unilateral restructuring of the labor market that only asks workers to sacrifice without any sacrifices from the business world and called for the minimum wage, which is currently 5,580 won (US$5.17), to be increased to 10,000 won (US$9.26).
“We must move forward more forcefully to ensure basic labor rights for all workers, to prevent the public servants’ pension system from being changed for the worse, to crush fake normalization of public corporations, to get to the bottom of the Sewol tragedy, to repeal the worthless enforcement decree of the special Sewol Law, and to fix the political corruption brought to light by the Sung Wan-jong scandal,” KCTU President Han Sang-gyun said…
Excerpted; full article link: http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/689507.html
Kind of police-centric reports – ZS
BEIJING, May 3 (Xinhua) — Many cities around the world were swept by protests and demonstrations on Friday, which marked the International Workers’ Day.
Most events were peaceful protests for workers’ rights and anti-austerity demonstrations. But violent clashes between police and protesters erupted in some cities, where protesters were arrested and stores and cars were vandalized.
Here is a look at some of the May Day rallies across the world:
– Germany…
– United States…
– Greece…
– Italy…
– The Philippines…
– South Korea…
– Turkey…
Full article link: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-05/03/c_134205470.htm
ISTANBUL, May 1 (Xinhua) — Turkish riot police on Friday fired water cannon and tear gas to disperse May Day protesters seeking to march to Istanbul’s iconic Taksim Square to mark mass killings of workers there almost 40 years ago.
Istanbul’s security chief Selami Altinok declared that 136 people have been detained.
Turkish police have tightened up security measures in the city from Thursday night to prevent the protesters from gathering in Taksim. More than 20,000 police have been deployed on the ground.
Over 60 anti-riot water cannon vehicles have also been positioned around the main districts. All the roads leading to the square have been cordoned off by the police.
Despite the police lockdown, protesters started to gather in Istanbul’s European side districts of Besiktas and Sisli from early in the morning. The crowds chanted anti-government slogans demanding the resignation of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In 1977, 34 workers were killed in May Day celebrations held in the Taksim Square when the police opened fire against the protesters. Since then, Turkey’s workers unions and laborers insisted [sic] to commemorate the killings in Taksim every year.
In June 2013, Taksim Square and neighboring Gezi Park have witnessed massive anti-government movement and protests to express frustrations with the ruling Justice and Development Party. The protests were later ended forcefully by the police.
On Wednesday, an Istanbul court acquitted 26 people charged with helping launch the 2013 protests, saying that there was insufficient evidence to prove them guilty.
However, there are hundreds of others in the country still facing charges of alleged crimes related to the mass protests.
Editor: Song Miou
*****************
This post edited by Zuo Shou
Article link: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-05/01/c_134202567.htm
by Lee Fang
4/4/2015
Article link: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/03/property-insurance-companies-flooded-dark-money-groups-tied-gop-cash/
Sweet & Sour Socialism 糖醋社会主义 