January, 27 2010, 08:41am EDT
World Report 2010: Backsliding on Human Rights
News Is Mostly Grim across North Africa, Report Finds
RABAT
Human rights conditions deteriorated across North Africa in 2009, with unfair trials in political cases the norm, and a narrowing space for independent journalists and associations to operate, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2010.
Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia are among the 15 North African and Middle Eastern countries, and more than 90 countries worldwide, covered in the 612-page World Report 2010, Human Rights Watch's 20th annual global review of human rights practices. The report argues that nations responsible for the worst human rights abuses have over the past year intensified a concerted attack against human rights defenders and organizations that document abuse.
"Morocco cracked down hard on those who broke the taboos against critical discussion of the monarchy, Islam, and Western Sahara," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "The presidents of Algeria and Tunisia, both re-elected after the constitutions were amended so they could run yet again, showed no signs of allowing greater space for dissent."
The report says there was backsliding on human rights overall in Morocco, undermining progress earlier in the decade. The government imprisoned a magazine editor and a human rights activist for raising sensitive topics, increased politically motivated travel restrictions against Sahrawi activists, and convicted political activists in unfair trials.
President Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, re-elected a fifth time with no real opposition, tolerated almost no dissent, using unfair trials and omnipresent plainclothes police to stifle the ability of Tunisians to speak and associate freely.
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria, also re-elected by a huge margin, maintained Algeria's state of emergency, under which civil liberties, such as the right to organize meetings and demonstrations, are tightly restricted.
MOROCCO
Repressive Legislation Punishes Government Critics
Morocco has a lively civil society and independent press. But authorities, aided by complaisant courts, use repressive legislation to punish and imprison peaceful opponents, especially those who violate taboos against criticizing the king or the monarchy, questioning the "Moroccanness" of Western Sahara, or "denigrating" Islam.
The government relies on laws providing prison terms for "defamatory" or "false" speech to prosecute critical reporting and commentary. Driss Chahtane, editor of al-Mish'al weekly, has been in prison since October for an article about the king's health. A human rights activist, Chekib el-Khayari from Nador, is completing the first year of a three-year sentence for "gravely insulting state institutions" because he accused state officials of complicity in illegal drug-trafficking. On November 14, Moroccan authorities summarily deported one Sahrawi activist, Aminatou Haidar, on the pretext that she had renounced her Moroccan citizenship by the manner in which she had completed a border entry form. The government allowed her to return home 33 days later under international pressure.
On July 28 the Rabat Court of Appeals convicted all 35 defendants in the so-called "Belliraj" case of forming a terrorist network, basing the verdicts almost entirely on the statements attributed to the defendants by the police, even though most defendants had repudiated those statements before the investigating judge and all repudiated the statements at trial. The court refused to investigate allegations of torture and falsified statements. The defendants included six well-known political figures, including two party leaders.
"Morocco's backtracking on rights became apparent to all during 2009," Whitson said. "Developments in 2010 will reveal whether authorities intend to reinforce this negative trend or put the country back on a path of progress on rights."
Human Rights Watch said that the two most significant steps Morocco could take to resume progress are to repeal laws that penalize nonviolent speech or protest that crosses the "red lines:" criticizing the monarchy, Morocco's claim to the Western Sahara, or Islam; and to implement King Mohammed VI's call for consolidating judicial independence by ensuring that courts respect the rights of defendants to challenge incriminating evidence, such as their statements to the police, and to present pertinent witnesses and other evidence in their own defense.
TUNISIA
No Space for Opposition Voices
President Ben Ali won a fifth term in a campaign that allowed no space for opposition voices on the critical issues. Authorities prevent Tunisian human rights organizations and independent journalists from operating freely, and the police impose heavy and arbitrary restrictions on the liberties of released political prisoners.
The country, which has one of the region's longest traditions of independent human rights activity, is today without a single human rights monitoring group that is allowed to operate both legally and freely. The year ended with journalists Taoufik Ben Brik and Zouhair Makhlouf behind bars for their critical reporting and commentary, and hundreds of young men serving prison terms on charges under the anti-terrorism law, even though they were never charged with preparing or carrying out specific acts of violence.
"Tunisia's intolerance for human rights dissent makes it a prime example of a worldwide trend among repressive countries to cover up abuses by trying to silence the messenger," Whitson said.
Tunisia's top priority for 2010 should be to strengthen judicial independence by ensuring that trials are fair, that defendants enjoy all their rights to present relevant evidence, and that judges issue verdicts based on the evidence presented before them in court, Human Rights Watch said.
ALGERIA
Restrictions Limit Civil Liberties
Algeria endured its 18th year under an emergency law that restricts civil liberties. Authorities banned public gatherings, such as outdoor demonstrations and even seminars organized by human rights organizations. The families of the thousands of Algerians whom state agents "disappeared" during the political strife of the 1990s received little or no information about the fate of their loved ones. Meanwhile, the 2006 Law on Peace and National Reconciliation provided a legal framework for the impunity enjoyed de facto by the perpetrators of "disappearances" and other atrocities committed during the 1990s, and for the penalization of criticism of the way the state handled political violence during that era. And, as in Morocco and Tunisia, journalists risked prison terms because of laws that chill free expression by providing penal sanctions for defamation.
"In Algeria, political violence is down compared to when President Bouteflika first took office in 1999," Whitson said. "But while Algerians are safer physically, they are less free when it comes to criticizing and challenging government policies."
Human Rights Watch urged Algeria to roll back the restrictions that muzzle independent media and civil society, and that criminalize questioning the state's handling of the political violence of the 1990s.
Human Rights Watch is one of the world's leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. By focusing international attention where human rights are violated, we give voice to the oppressed and hold oppressors accountable for their crimes. Our rigorous, objective investigations and strategic, targeted advocacy build intense pressure for action and raise the cost of human rights abuse. For 30 years, Human Rights Watch has worked tenaciously to lay the legal and moral groundwork for deep-rooted change and has fought to bring greater justice and security to people around the world.
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'Crucial' UN Report on Gaza Genocide Must Spur Global Action, Says Amnesty
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"The time to act to prevent genocide is now," Amnesty International's secretary general said Tuesday, a day after the United Nations Human Rights Council released a draft report detailing how the panel found that there are "reasonable grounds to believe" that Israel is already committing genocidal violence in Gaza.
Amnesty's Agnes Callamard called the 25-page report a "crucial body of work that must serve as a vital call to action to states," many of which have called for a cease-fire in Gaza for several months.
After the U.N. report found that "the overwhelming nature and scale of Israel's assault on Gaza... reveal an intent to physically destroy Palestinians as a group," Callamard said "states must now focus their efforts on making these calls a reality."
"Third states must apply political pressure on the warring parties to implement the U.N. Security Council resolution adopted yesterday demanding an immediate cease-fire, use their influence to insist that Israel abides by the resolution, including by stopping the shelling and lifting restrictions on humanitarian aid," said Callamard. "They must impose a comprehensive arms embargo against all parties to the conflict. They must also pressure Hamas and other armed groups to free all civilian hostages."
The U.N. report was released the same day that the U.N Security Council adopted a resolution demanding an immediate, temporary cease-fire for the remainder of the month of Ramadan—the first cease-fire resolution to pass at the council following three that failed due to the U.S. vetoing the measures.
The U.S., which gives Israel $3.8 billion in annual military aid and has continued to provide support throughout the bombardment, abstained from voting on Monday's resolution and infuriated human rights experts by baselessly claiming the vote was "nonbinding."
The U.N. report, titled Anatomy of a Genocide, detailed actions Israel has taken since beginning its bombardment of Gaza in October that could violate Article II of the Genocide Convention, including killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction, and imposing measures intended to prevent births.
Along with killing at least 32,414 Palestinians in Gaza—73% of whom have been women and children, and the remaining 27% were not proven to have been Hamas members—Israel has also imposed mass starvation on the population, killing "10 children daily," according to the report. Israel has detained thousands of Palestinian men and boys in undisclosed locations; injured 70,000 people; forced medical personnel to perform "hazardous health procedures, such as amputations without anesthetics, including on children"; and "destroyed or severely damaged most life-sustaining infrastructure."
Callamard noted on Tuesday that the report came two months after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) announced an interim ruling that Israel is "plausibly" committing a genocide in Gaza and ordered the country to take action to prevent genocidal violence by its forces.
"In that time, the situation in Gaza has grown exponentially worse, with thousands more Palestinians killed and Israel continuing to refuse to comply with the ICJ ruling to ensure provision of sufficient humanitarian aid to Palestinians as human-made famine edges closer each day and more people starve to death," said Callamard.
The secretary general echoed a call in the report, which was compiled by Francesca Albanese, special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, for the full funding of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
Israel said Sunday it will no longer permit UNRWA aid trucks to deliver humanitarian relief in northern Gaza, where one-third of children under age 2 are now suffering from acute malnutrition. The U.S. officially suspended UNRWA funding through March 2025 on Monday after President Joe Biden signed a new spending package into law.
The U.S. led several countries in cutting funding to the agency in January after Israel claimed 12 of UNRWA's 13,000 employees in Gaza had been involved in the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in October. Countries including Finland, Canada, and Australia have since reinstated funding.
Callamard also called on all states, particularly powerful Western countries that are allied with Israel, including the U.S., to support international authorities as they try to hold Israeli officials to account for the mass killing and starving of civilians in Gaza. Israel has refused to allow U.N. experts and other independent human rights monitors access to Gaza.
"Helping to prevent genocide also means supporting accountability efforts including the ongoing investigation by the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and exercising universal jurisdiction to bring those suspected of crimes under international law to justice," said Callamard.
The secretary general noted that momentum has grown in recent days around international calls for a cease-fire, but said a desperately needed halt in fighting requires a concerted push by influential states to become a reality.
"An enduring cease-fire," said Callamard, "remains the best way to enforce the ICJ's provisional measures to prevent genocide and further crimes and civilian suffering."
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"If the Supreme Court refuses to follow the evidence and imposes medically unnecessary restrictions on mifepristone, it will be just another stepping stone in the anti-abortion movement's end goal of a nationwide ban on abortion."
"Mifepristone has been used by millions of women over the last 20 years, and its safety and effectiveness have been well-documented," said Jamila Taylor, president and CEO of the Institute for Women's Policy Research. "The drug has taken on even greater importance for women's health since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and the far right has moved to block women's access to healthcare at every turn."
In a dubious practice known as "judge shopping," the plaintiffs filed their complaint in Amarillo, Texas, where Matthew Kacsmaryk, the sole federal district judge and a Trump appointee, ruled last April that the FDA's approval of mifepristone was illegal. Shortly after Kacsmaryk's ruling, a federal judge in Washington state issued a contradictory decision that blocked the FDA from removing mifepristone from the market. The U.S. Department of Justice subsequently appealed Kacsmaryk's ruling.
Later in April 2023, the Supreme Court issued a temporary order that allowed mifepristone to remain widely available while legal challenges continued. A three-judge panel of the right-wing 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last August that the FDA's 2016 move to allow mifepristone to be taken later in pregnancy, mailed directly to patients, and prescribed by healthcare professionals other than doctors, was likely illegal. However, the court also allowed the pill to remain on the market pending the outcome of litigation.
In an analysis of the case published Tuesday, jurist Amy Howe explained:
There are three separate questions before the justices on Tuesday. The first one is whether the challengers have a legal right to sue, known as standing, at all. The FDA maintains that they do not, because the individual doctors do not prescribe mifepristone and are not obligated to do anything as a result of the FDA's decision to allow other doctors to prescribe the drug.
The court of appeals held that the medical groups have standing because of the prospect that one of the groups' members might have to treat women who had been prescribed mifepristone and then suffered complications—which, the FDA stresses, are "exceedingly rare"—requiring emergency care. But the correct test, the FDA and [mifepristone maker] Danco maintain, is not whether the groups' members will suffer a possible injury, but an imminent injury.
Destiny Lopez, acting co-CEO of the Guttmacher Institute, called the plaintiffs' claims "baseless."
"If the Supreme Court refuses to follow the evidence and imposes medically unnecessary restrictions on mifepristone, it will be just another stepping stone in the anti-abortion movement's end goal of a nationwide ban on abortion," she said on Tuesday. "As the court weighs its decision, let's be clear that the only outcome that respects facts and science is maintaining full access to mifepristone."
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Project 2025, a coalition of more than 100 right-wing groups including Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and other anti-abortion organizations, wants to require the FDA to ban drugs used for medication abortions, protect employers who refuse to include contraceptive coverage in insurance plans, and increase surveillance of abortion and maternal mortality reporting. The coalition is reportedly drafting executive orders through which Trump, if reelected, could roll back Biden administration policies aimed at protecting and expanding abortion access.
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Right-wing groups including the Heritage Foundation have been pressing Trump to invoke the Comstock laws, a series of anti-obscenity statutes passed in 1873 during the Ulysses S. Grant administration. One of the laws outlawed using the U.S. Postal Service to send contraceptives and punished offenders with up to five years' hard labor. Named after Victorian-era anti-vice crusader and U.S. postal inspector Anthony Comstock, the laws were condemned by progressives of the day, with one syndicated newspaper editorial accusing Comstock of striking "a dastard's blow at liberty and law in the United States."
Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern said Tuesday that far-right Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito—who wrote the majority opinion in Dobbs—"are clearly eager to revive the Comstock Act as a nationwide ban on medication abortion, and maybe procedural abortion, too."
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Progressive U.S. lawmakers joined reproductive rights advocates in rallying outside the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
"Mifepristone is safe and effective and has been used in our country for decades," said Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). "These far-right justices need to stop legislating from the bench."
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) asserted that "medication abortion is safe, effective, and routine healthcare."
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Experts Warn of Toxins in GM Corn Amid US-Mexico Trade Dispute
"The Mexican government is both wise and on solid ground in refusing to allow its people to participate in the experiment that the U.S. government is seeking to impose."
Mar 26, 2024
Friends of the Earth U.S. on Monday released a brief backing Mexico's ban on genetically modified corn for human consumption, which the green group recently submitted to a dispute settlement panel charged with considering the U.S. government's challenge to the policy.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced plans to phase out the herbicide glyphosate as well as genetically modified (GM) or genetically engineered (GE) corn in 2020. Last year he issued an updated decree making clear the ban does not apply to corn imports for livestock feed and industrial use. Still, the Biden administration objected and, after fruitless formal negotiations, requested the panel under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
"The U.S. government has not presented an 'appropriate' risk assessment to the tribunal as called for in the USMCA dispute because such an assessment has never been done in the U.S. or anywhere in the world," said agricultural economist Charles Benbrook, who wrote the brief with Kendra Klein, director of science at Friends of the Earth U.S.
"The U.S. is, in effect, asking Mexico to trust the completeness and accuracy of the initial GE corn safety assessments carried out 15 to 30 years ago by the companies working to bring GE corn events to market."
The group's 13-page brief lays out health concerns related to GM corn and glyphosate, and the shortcomings of U.S. analyses and policies. It also stresses the stakes of the panel's decision, highlighting that "corn is the caloric backbone of the Mexican food supply, accounting, on average, for 50% of the calories and protein in the Mexican diet."
Blasting the Biden administration's case statement to the panel as "seriously deficient," Klein said Monday that "it lacks basic information about the toxins expressed in contemporary GMO corn varieties and their levels. The U.S. submission also ignores dozens of studies linking the insecticidal toxins and glyphosate residues found in GMO corn to adverse impacts on public health."
The brief explains that "since the commercial introduction of GE corn in 1996 and event-specific approvals in the 1990s and 2000s, dramatic changes have occurred in corn production systems. There has been an approximate four-fold increase in the number of toxins and pesticides applied on the average hectare of contemporary GE industrial corn compared to the early 1990s. Unfortunately, this upward trend is bound to continue, and may accelerate."
The U.S. statement's assurances about risks from Bacillus thuringiensis or vegetative insecticidal protein (Bt/VIP) residues "are not based on data and science," the brief warns.
"The U.S. is, in effect, asking Mexico to trust the completeness and accuracy of the initial GE corn safety assessments carried out 15 to 30 years ago by the companies working to bring GE corn events to market," the document says. "The Mexican government is both wise and on solid ground in refusing to allow its people to participate in the experiment that the U.S. government is seeking to impose on Mexico."
"The absence of any systematic monitoring of human exposure levels to Bt/VIP toxins and herbicides from consumption of corn-based foods is regrettable," the brief adds. "It is also unfortunate that the U.S. government rejected the Mexican proposal to jointly design and carry out a modern battery of studies able to overcome gaps in knowledge regarding GE corn impacts."
"The U.S. government's case against Mexico has no more scientific merit than its sham GMO regulatory regime, and should be rejected by the USMCA dispute resolution panel."
Friends of the Earth isn't the only U.S.-based group formally supporting the Mexican government in the USMCA process. The Center for Food Safety sent a 10-page submission by science director Bill Freese, an expert on biotech regulation, to the panel on March 15. His analysis addresses U.S. regulation of genetically modified organisms (GMO) along with the risks of GM corn and glyphosate.
"GMO regulation in the U.S. was crafted by Monsanto, now owned by Bayer, and is a critical part of our government's promotion of the biotechnology industry," Freese said last week, referring to the company known for the glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup. "The aim is to quell concerns and promote acceptance of GMOs, domestically and abroad, rather than critically evaluate potential toxicity or allergenicity."
His submission notes that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration "does not require a GE plant developer to do anything prior to marketing its GE crop or food derived from it. Instead, FDA operates what it calls a voluntary consultation program that is designed to enhance consumer confidence and speed GE crops to market."
"When governmental review is optional; and even when it's conducted, starts and ends with the regulated company's safety assurance—what's the point?" Freese asked. "Clearly, it's the PR value of a governmental rubber stamp."
"The Mexican government's prohibition of GM corn for tortillas and other masa corn products is fully justified," he asserted. "The U.S. government's case against Mexico has no more scientific merit than its sham GMO regulatory regime, and should be rejected by the USMCA dispute resolution panel."
In a Common Dreams opinion piece last week, Ernesto Hernández-López, a law professor at Chapman University in California, pointed out that Mexico's recent submission to the panel also "offers scientific proof and lots of it," including "over 150 scientific studies, referred to in peer-review journals, systemic research reviews, and more."
"Mexico incorporates perspectives from toxicology, pediatrics, plant biology, hematology, epidemiology, public health, and data mining, to name a few," he wrote. "This clearly and loudly responds to American persistence. The practical result: American leaders cannot claim there is no science supporting the decree. They may disagree with or dislike the findings, but there is proof."
The Biden administration's effort to quash the Mexican policy notably comes despite the lack of impact on trade. While implementing its ban last year, "Mexico also made its largest corn purchase from the U.S., 15.3 million metric tons," National Geographicreported last month.
Kenneth Smith Ramos, former Mexican chief negotiator for the USMCA, told the outlet that "right now, it may not have a big economic impact because what Mexico is using to produce flour, cornmeal, and tortillas is a very small percentage of their overall imports; but that does not mean the U.S. is not concerned with this being the tip of the iceberg."
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