The Myanmar junta killed at least 114 people across the country on Saturday, 27 March, in a brutal crackdown against people who are protesting the military coup on 1 February. Amongst those killed include a 13-year-old girl. Several other young children have been attacked by the security forces in different parts of the country. A one-year-old girl was reportedly shot with a rubber bullet and has incurred a severe injury in her eye. In another incident, a five-year-old boy was shot in the head. Live rounds of ammunition were opened at unarmed protesters in major cities including Mandalay and...
The former United Nations Special Rapporteur on arbitrary executions and renowned human rights law professor Christof Heyns passed away this weekend. “It is with great shock, bereavement and sadness that the Faculty of Law at the University of Pretoria has received the news of the passing today of one of its internationally esteemed and stalwart colleagues and friends,” said a tweet from the university on Sunday. Heyns served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions from 2010 until 2016. In that role, he examined mobile phone footage of Sri...
Tributes have flooded in around the world for Nawal El Saadawi, an Egyptian doctor, feminist and writer, who was a panel member in the 2010 Permanent People’s Tribunal on Sri Lanka which acknowledged the “importance of continuing investigation into the possibility of genocide”. Nawal El Saadawi passed away aged 89-years-old, having been a prolific writer and campaigner throughout her life, speaking out against practices such as Female Genital Mutilation and gender-based oppression. See more from the BBC , Guardian and Al-Jazeera . She also took part in the 2010 tribunal on Sri Lanka. A 2013...
Secretary-General of the UN António Guterres stressed the key role that the United Nationals plays in combating deteriorating human rights violations around the globe in his opening remarks at the 46 th session of the UNHRC session in Geneva. “Every corner of the globe is suffering from the sickness of violations of human rights,” he said, highlighting the ways in which democracies and fundamental rights of certain groups of people continue to be undermined since the COVID-19 pandemic. “Of course there are a number of extremely concerning country situations — some of them very prolonged – and...
The United Kingdom and Canada announced that they are imposing sanctions on individuals responsible for serious human rights violations against the people of Myanmar during the coup. UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announced that three Myanmar military generals will face travel bans and their assets will be frozen under the UK's sanctions regime. Today the UK has sanctioned further individuals responsible for serious human rights violations against the people of Myanmar during the coup. We are clear we will act to hold those who violate human rights accountable. We stand with the #Myanmar...
Photo of ICC’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday determined that it has jurisdiction over the territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict, opening the way for the chief prosecutor to inquire into allegations of Israeli war crimes. The decision comes more than a year after the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, was asked to confirm its jurisdictions in the area. It has been widely approved by the Palestinians who have pushed for an investigation since 2014, following a brutal campaign in the Gaza strip and the continued...
Myanmar’s civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been detained by the country’s military following a military coup in which the top army commander, Min Aung Hlaing, seized total control. The coup follows the contested election victory of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, which the military (Tatmadaw) alleges was fraudulent. The Tatmadaw has made the unsubstantiated claim that there were almost 10 million unlisted voters were on the list. Human rights groups had noted during the election that polls were “fundamentally flawed” not due to mass voter fraud but rather the disenfranchisement...
Indian riot police attempted to clear farmers from one of the farmer protest sites in Ghazipur by cutting off water and electricity supplies. The protesters defiantly refused to leave the site and were joined by thousands of protesters, forcing the police to back down. Ghazipur is one of the protest sites on the outskirts of Delhi, where Indian farmers have been demanding for the Indian government to repeal three agricultural laws. The laws are said to benefit private buyers over farmers, hurting the farmer's livelihoods. Tens of thousands of farmers have been protesting peacefully since...
Three British Sikh men of Indian origin have been arrested by the UK police in connection with the murder of Rulda Singh, a member of the Hindu-supremacist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), in India in 2009. In a series of dawn raids, Gursharanvir Singh Wahiwala and his brother Amritivir Singh aged 37 and 40 respectively were arrested in Coventry and Piara Singh Gill, 38, was arrested in Wolverhampton. Extradition warrants have been issued by the Westminster magistrates’ court against the three men on suspicions of conspiracy to murder. All three arrested have lived their whole...
A group of United Nations human rights experts have accused US president Donald Trump of violating international law after he pardoned four Blackwater private security contractors who were serving prison sentences for killing 14 innocent Iraqi civilians, including two children, in Baghdad in 2007. According to the US Justice Department, at around noon on 16 September 2007, several contractors opened fire indiscriminately in Nisour Square. When the shooting stopped, Iraqi authorities ruled 17 Iraqi civilians had been killed. An FBI investigation concluded there were 14 deaths, including that of two children aged 9 and 11, and said the deaths were considered unjustified under the rules of the use of deadly force.