As Yemen War Rages On, Saudi King Elevates the War's Architect—His Own Son—to Be Crown Prince

As the U.S. moves ahead with a massive arms deal with Saudi Arabia, Saudi’s king has deposed his nephew as crown prince and has replaced him with his son—the same man presiding over the devastating U.S.-backed, Saudi-led war in Yemen. The move comes a month after President Donald Trump signed a series of arms deals with Saudi Arabia totaling a record $110 billion during a visit to Riyadh. The arms deal includes tanks, artillery, ships, helicopters, missile defense systems and cybersecurity technology. We speak to Kristine Beckerle of Human Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch: 'Bahrain Children Beaten & Tortured' for Taking Part in Protests

Human rights watch claims there is evidence that Bahraini security forces routinely detain and abuse children suspected of participating in anti-government protests. That's according to a report, published today. Here we have a quote 'Information recently obtained from victims, family members, and local rights activists suggests that Bahraini authorities often hold children for long periods in detention and subject them to similar forms of mistreatment as adult detainees, including beatings and threats of torture.' Nicholas McGeehan, one of the authors of this press release, told RT some of the alarming details.

Syria: Is It Worth Risking Human Lives for the Sake of Human Rights?

Chemical weapons have horrified mankind since their first widespread use almost a century ago. The world has come to recognize their use as a flagrant violation of international law. As the US once again beats the drums of war towards Syria, we ask how justified such an intervention is, given the conflicting evidence and the widespread opposition to it. Will a strike help stop the war, or will it drag the whole region into a more brutal and protracted conflict? To wrestle over these issues, Oksana is joined by Kenneth Roth, the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch.

Burmese Government Accused of Failing to Stop Anti-Muslim Violence
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: The Burmese government has been accused of failing to protect its religious minorities after human rights campaigners claimed that entire districts of a Muslim-inhabited coastal town were destroyed in communal violence.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch released satellite images which it said showed that more than 800 buildings and houseboats had been razed in the town of Kyaukpyu, in western Burma's Rakhine state.

It said the victims of the violence were mainly Rohingya Muslims, thousands of whom have fled the area since tensions with Burma's majority Buddhist population flared anew. Officials say that at least 67 people have been killed and 95 wounded in the past week.

Long-running tensions between the two groups first flared back in June, when accusations that a group of Muslim men were responsible for the rape and murder of a Buddhist woman led to 80 deaths and 75,000 people fleeing their homes.

While the Rakhine Buddhists claim to have been the victim of pogroms themselves, the Rohingya Muslims claim to have borne the brunt of the violence. » | Colin Freeman | Saturday, October 27, 2012

Libyan Troops Attempt to Put Down Unrest in East

REUTERS: Soldiers sought to put down unrest in Libya's second city on Friday and opposition forces said they were fighting troops for control of a nearby town after crackdowns which Human Rights Watch said killed 24 people.

Protests inspired by the revolts that brought down long-serving rulers of neighbouring Egypt and Tunisia have led to violence unprecedented in Muammar Gaddafi's 41 years as leader of the oil exporting country.

The New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch said that according to its sources inside Libya, security forces had killed at least 24 people over the past two days. Exile groups have given much higher tolls which could not be confirmed.

Opponents of Gaddafi had designated Thursday a day of rage to try to emulate uprisings sweeping through North Africa and the Middle East. Unrest continued well into the night.

U.S. President Barack Obama said he was "deeply concerned" about reports of violence from Bahrain, a close U.S. ally, Libya and Yemen and urged governments to show restraint in dealing with protesters. >>> Tripoli | Friday, February 18, 2011

REUTERS: Exiles say Libyan city "in hands of people" >>> Geneva | Friday, February 18, 2011

SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: 'Witnessing Gadhafi's Overthrow Would Be a Special Pleasure': The wave of rebellion in the Arab world keeps spreading, but brutal crackdowns in Libya and Bahrain show that pro-democracy demonstrators are by no means assured of success. German commentators argue that Moammar Gadhafi will be hard to topple and call on the EU to help prevent more violence. >>> David Gordon Smith | Friday, February 18, 2011

Kim Jong-Il. Crédits photo : Le Monde
En Corée du Nord, la situation des droits de l'homme reste très alarmante
LE MONDE: Le non-respect des droits de l'homme en République populaire démocratique de Corée (RPDC) était un sujet sur lequel les déclarations à Séoul du président Barack Obama étaient attendues. En Chine, l'hôte de la Maison Blanche a été peu mordant. Il ne l'a pas été davantage à Séoul dans le cas d'un pays certes moins puissant dont la situation a été qualifiée de "pire du monde" par Vitit Muntarbhorn, rapporteur auprès des Nations unies sur les droits de l'homme en RPDC.

Des organisations de défense des libertés civiles avaient exhorté M. Obama à la fermeté : "le problème nucléaire a trop longtemps éludé d'autres questions", estime Elaine Pearson, directrice adjointe pour l'Asie de Human Right Watch. Dans une lettre ouverte au président américain, Timothy Peter, directeur de Helping Hands Korea, rappelle que la Chine rapatrie de force les Nord-Coréens qui passent clandestinement la frontière. Ils seraient actuellement de 30 000 à 50 000. La plupart sont des migrants économiques qui passent temporairement en Chine en quête de travail et de nourriture. Ramenés en RPDC, ils risquent de lourdes peines de prison. >>> Tokyo Correspondant | Jeudi 19 Novembre 2009

Heroin Addiction Spreads Like Wildfire in Russia
LOS ANGELES TIMES: As the drug has poured into the country from Afghanistan in recent years, Russians' relative ignorance about its dangers has taken a huge toll, especially on the young.

Reporting from Podolsk, Russia - The young man named Anton is a member of Russia's "lost generation."

He's the son of middle-class, college-educated engineers; he studied at a good university and became a truck sales manager in Moscow. He's also a 28-year-old heroin addict.

In the years since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan triggered a sharp increase in poppy cultivation, Russia has been flooded with heroin. The drug has crept along a trail stretching from Afghanistan through Tajikistan and other Central Asian nations and over the Russian border, turning this country into the world's top consumer of heroin, the government says.

The drug has spread like fire through a country uniquely unqualified to cope with its dangers: Narcotics were largely absent during Soviet times, and most people are still unaware of the risk of heroin addiction, even as an estimated 83 Russians a day die by overdosing on the drug, government figures show.

"It's a catastrophe for us. We were completely unprepared for this turn of events," says Evgeny Bryun, Moscow's chief drug addiction specialist. "We have our own lost generation."

The transition from a Soviet state largely free from heroin to a booming nation awash in the drug has been painful and dark, marked by widespread public ignorance of the risks and symptoms of addiction, lingering shame and stigma, and muddled government efforts at treatment.

Methadone, which is widely used in the West to wean people off heroin, is illegal in Russia, and rehabilitation programs are unavailable in many parts of the country. In 2007, Human Rights Watch concluded that the treatment at state drug clinics was "so poor as to constitute a violation of the right to health."

Meanwhile, at private clinics, all manner of experimental treatments -- including shock therapy and the removal of parts of the brain -- are in vogue. In Bryun's government-run clinic, addicts take turns sleeping hooked up to machines that send gentle electrical impulses through their brains, or lying encased in a full-body relaxation therapy machine.

Heroin has also emerged as a thorn in U.S.-Russian relations, as officials in Moscow have grown increasingly angry over what they describe as American indifference to the booming heroin trade.

On the margins of the grinding war in Afghanistan, U.S. efforts to eradicate poppy fields -- and to come up with persuasive incentives to wean farmers from the crop -- have remained largely ineffective for years.

In a nod of cooperation to the Obama administration, Russia recently agreed to allow cargo planes carrying U.S. troops and weapons to pass through the country en route to Afghanistan. But at the same time, it's lobbying noisily for tougher crackdowns on the cultivation of opium poppies, which are used in the production of heroin. Early this month, President Dmitry Medvedev called rampant heroin addiction "a threat to the country's national security."

Russia has called on the United Nations to link the foreign troop presence in Afghanistan to an obligation to destroy poppy plantations. >>> Megan K. Stack | Friday, September 25, 2009

LOS ANGELES TIMES PHOTOGALLERY:
Treating heroin addiction in Russia >>>

Watch AP video: Russian students may face drugs tests too >>>

Saudis 'Must Offer Shia Equality'
Qom. Photo: Google Images
BBC: A report by the Human Rights Watch pressure group has detailed what it says is systematic discrimination in Saudi Arabia against Shia Muslims.

Unfavourable treatment of minority Shia extends from education and employment to the justice system, leading to a big increase in sectarian tension, it says.

They comprise 10 to 15% of the Saudi population, and have long complained of being treated as second-class citizens.
Human Rights Watch wants a government commission to tackle the problem.

Saudi Arabia follows the puritanical form of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism, and many Wahhabi clerics regard Shia Muslims as unbelievers.

Equal opportunities

The report focuses on an incident in February, when Shia pilgrims in the holy city of Medina clashed with religious police.
This led to Shia demonstrations in the Eastern Province followed by the arrest of a number of the protestors.

Shias want equal opportunities in government and the military as well as freedom of worship.

They want to be able to build their own mosques, have their civil courts granted more power and to print their own religious books. >>> | Thursday, September 03, 2009

Afghanistan Passes 'Barbaric' Law Diminishing Women's Rights
THE GUARDIAN: Rehashed legislation allows husbands to deny wives food if they fail to obey sexual demands

Women wearing the burka in Baharak town, Afghanistan. Photo: The Guardian
Afghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands' sexual demands, despite international outrage over an earlier version of the legislation which President Hamid Karzai had promised to review.

The new final draft of the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work.

"It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying 'blood money' to a girl who was injured when he raped her," the US charity Human Rights Watch said.

In early April, Barack Obama and Gordon Brown joined an international chorus of condemnation when the Guardian revealed that the earlier version of the law legalised rape within marriage, according to the UN.

Although Karzai appeared to back down, activists say the revised version of the law still contains repressive measures and contradicts the Afghan constitution and international treaties signed by the country.

Islamic law experts and human rights activists say that although the language of the original law has been changed, many of the provisions that alarmed women's rights groups remain, including this one: "Tamkeen is the readiness of the wife to submit to her husband's reasonable sexual enjoyment, and her prohibition from going out of the house, except in extreme circumstances, without her husband's permission. If any of the above provisions are not followed by the wife she is considered disobedient."

The law has been backed by the hardline Shia cleric Ayatollah Mohseni, who is thought to have influence over the voting intentions of some of the country's Shias, which make up around 20% of the population. Karzai has assiduously courted such minority leaders in the run up to next Thursday's election, which is likely to be a close run thing, according to a poll released yesterday.

Human Rights Watch, which has obtained a copy of the final law, called on all candidates to pledge to repeal the law, which it says contradicts Afghanistan's own constitution.

The group said that Karzai had "made an unthinkable deal to sell Afghan women out in the support of fundamentalists in the August 20 election". >>> Jon Boone in Kandahar | Friday, August 14, 2009

Festhalten an Guantánamo-Tribunalen: Obama erntet scharfe Kritik von Menschenrechtlern
WELT ONLINE: Internationale und US-amerikanische Menschenrechtsgruppen sind wütend auf Barack Obama. Mit scharfen Worten verurteilen sie die Entscheidung des US-Präsidenten, die Militärtribunale im Gefangenenlager Guantánamo auf Kuba wieder zuzulassen. Obama rücke auf gefährliche Weise von seinen Reformvorhaben ab, hieß es.

US-Präsident Barack Obama hat mit seiner Entscheidung zum Festhalten an den Militärtribunalen gegen Terrorverdächtige scharfe Kritik von Menschenrechtsorganisationen hervorgerufen. Es handle sich um eine „alarmierende Entwicklung, erklärte am Freitag das Zentrum für Verfassungsrechte in Washington, das sich seit Jahren um eine bessere Rechtsstellung der Gefangenen im US-Lager Guantánamo auf Kuba bemüht. Obama habe vor seiner Wahl die Hoffnung geweckt, mit den „gefährlichen Experimenten“ seines Amtsvorgängers George W. Bush zu brechen.

Das System der Militärtribunale sei „irreparabel fehlerhaft“, erklärte der Direktor von Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth. Indem die falsche Idee der Bush-Regierung wiederbelebt werde, rücke Obama auf gefährliche Weise von seinen eigenen Reformvorhaben ab.

Die American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) erklärte, die Militärtribunale zählten zu der „Politik der Folter, der illegalen Haft und der Verweigerung gerechter Prozesse“, die von der Regierung Bush verfolgt worden sei.

Amnesty International warf Obama vor, eines seiner zentralen Wahlversprechen gebrochen zu haben. Die Tribunale, die Obama selbst als enormen Fehler bezeichnet habe, müssten abgeschafft werden, forderte der Vertreter der Menschenrechtsorganisation, Rob Freer. >>> | Samstag, 16. Mai 2009

Prince Issa of the UAE Tortures a Citizen: الشيخ عيسى يعذب مواطنا

NAME: Folter-Video: Arabischer Prinz quält Opfer vor der Kamera

Es ist ein grausames Video aus den Vereinigten Arabischen Emiraten. Zu sehen ist Scheich Issa, Mitglied des arabischen Königshauses, wie er einen wehrlosen Mann misshandelt. Eigentlich sollten diese Bilder geheim bleiben. Doch ein ehemaliger Vertrauter des Prinzen konnte das Video außer Landes schmuggeln.

Die Bilder schockieren: Ein Mann kauert mit gefesselten Beinen im Sand, wimmert vor sich hin. Seine Peiniger knien sich auf ihn, stopfen ihm den Sand in den Mund, schlagen mit der Peitsche auf ihn ein. Einer der Folterer heißt Scheich Issa bin Zayed al-Nayran: Er ist der 22. königliche Prinz aus dem Königshaus der Vereinigten Arabischen Emirate.

Mit immer brutaleren Methoden quälen er und ein Polizist den wehrlosen Mann; am Schluss überfahren sie ihn mit einem Geländewagen. Ihr Opfer, angeblich ein afghanischer Getreidehändler, der den Prinzen betrogen haben soll, überlebt schwer verletzt. >>> Von Céline Lauer | Montag, 27. April 2009

Saudi Arabia Just Cannot Pass Muster When It Comes to Human Rights, Can It?
BBC: The New York-based organisation Human Rights Watch has called on Saudi Arabia to do more to protect Asian domestic workers from mistreatment.

It says some cases amount to slavery, with employers going unpunished for withholding wages, forced confinement, or physical and sexual violence.

HRW says some workers are imprisoned or lashed on spurious charges such as theft, adultery or witchcraft.

Thousands take shelter with the Social Affairs ministry or foreign embassies. Saudis Urged to Curb Maid Abuse >>> | July 8, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Dust Jacket Hardcover, direct from the publishers (US) >>>
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