January, 16 2022, 03:41am EDT
Bend the Arc Statement on the Release of All Hostages in Colleyville, Texas
"During this long day and night we have taken comfort in solidarity."
WASHINGTON
Stosh Cotler, CEO of Bend the Arc: Jewish Action released the following statement on Saturday evening in response to all four hostages at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas being released and safe:
"We are grateful that all hostages at Congregation Beth Israel have been released and we send our prayers for peace and healing to them, their families, their congregation, and their community.
During this long day and night, Jewish people across the country have taken comfort in the outpouring of support for our community from our neighbors of Muslim, Christian, and other faiths who stood united in condemning this attack and antisemitism in all forms.
Today we have felt the all too familiar sinking in our hearts, the outrage and horror of witnessing yet another antisemitic attack on a synagogue on Shabbat. Whether we are walking down the streets of our neighborhoods or through the doors of our holy spaces, no one should experience fear or be targeted for their faith.
We worry that in the days ahead there will be those who try to use our community's pain and trauma to fuel division or incite violence against other communities -- we will not let them. We will reject any attempt, rooted in anti-Muslim bigotry, to hold an entire community responsible for the actions of one individual.
We are sending our love to Jewish communities in Colleyville and across the country. We all deserve to be safe in our places of worship and in this country, where every single one of us belongs."
Bend the Arc is where progressive American Jews join together to fight for justice and equality for all. We are the only national Jewish organization focused exclusively on progressive social change in the United States.
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South Korean Court Hears First Asian Youth Climate Case
"Carbon emission reduction keeps getting pushed back as if it is homework that can be done later," said one plaintiff's mother. "But that burden will be what our children have to bear eventually."
Apr 23, 2024
One of South Korea's two highest courts on Tuesday began hearing Asia's first-ever youth-led climate lawsuit, which accuses the country's government of failing to protect citizens from the effects of the worsening, human-caused planetary emergency.
Nineteen members of the advocacy group Youth4ClimateAction filed a constitutional complaint in March 2020 accusing the South Korean government of violating their rights to life, the "pursuit of happiness," a "healthy and pleasant environment," and to "resist against human extinction."
The lawsuit also notes "the inequality between the adult generation who can enjoy the relatively pleasant environment and the youth generation who must face a potential disaster from climate change," as well as the government's obligation to prevent and protect citizens from environmental disasters.
"South Korea's current climate plans are not sufficient to keep the temperature increase within 1.5°C, thus violating the state's obligation to protect fundamental rights," the plaintiffs said in a statement.
South Korea's Constitutional Court began hearing a case that accuses the government of having failed to protect 200 people, including dozens of young environmental activists and children, by not tackling climate change https://t.co/XRIGE23KGMÂ pic.twitter.com/snvqBaGGe9
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 23, 2024
Signatories to the 2015 Paris agreement committed to "holding the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above preindustrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C."
According to the United Nations Environment Program's (UNEP) most recent Emissions Gap Report, the world must slash greenhouse gas emissions by 28% before 2030 to limit warming to 2°C above preindustrial levels and 42% to halt warming at 1.5°C. UNEP said that based on current policies and practices, the world is on track for 2.9°C of warming by the end of the century.
A summary of the lawsuit notes that South Korea is the fifth-largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations, and that the government is constitutionally obligated to protect Koreans from the climate emergency.
Instead, the plaintiffs argue, the Korean Parliament "gave the government total discretion to set the GHG reduction target without providing any specific guidelines." Furthermore, they contend that the government's downgraded reduction targets fall "far short of what is necessary to satisfy the temperature rise threshold acknowledged by the global community."
Lee Donghyun, the mother of one of the plaintiffs, toldReuters: "Carbon emission reduction keeps getting pushed back as if it is homework that can be done later. But that burden will be what our children have to bear eventually."
The South Korean case comes on the heels of a landmark ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which found that Switzerland's government violated senior citizens' human rights by refusing to heed scientists' warnings to swiftly phase out fossil fuel production.
The ECHR ruled on the same day that climate cases brought by a former French mayor and a group of Portuguese youth were inadmissible.
Courts in Australia, Brazil, and Peru also have human rights-based climate cases on their dockets.
In the United States, a state judge in Montana ruled last year in favor of 16 young residents who argued that fossil fuel extraction violated their constitutional right to "a clean and healthful environment."
Meanwhile, the Biden administration is trying to derail a historic youth-led climate lawsuit against the U.S. government.
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UN Rights Chief Demands International Probe of Mass Graves Near Gaza Hospitals
"Hospitals are entitled to very special protection under international humanitarian law," said Volker Türk, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights.
Apr 23, 2024
The United Nations' human rights chief on Tuesday called for an international investigation into mass graves discovered at two Gaza hospitals that Israeli forces recently assailed and destroyed, further imperiling the enclave's barely functioning healthcare system.
Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement that he was "horrified" by the discovery of mass graves at the Nasser and al-Shifa medical complexes, which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reduced to ruins.
More than 300 bodies were reportedly discovered in the mass grave near the Nasser facility in Khan Younis, Gaza, and eyewitnesses said Israeli soldiers executed civilians during their two-week-long raid of al-Shifa last month.
Türk demanded an "independent, effective, and transparent" probe into the killings and mass graves, adding that "given the prevailing climate of impunity, this should include international investigators."
"Hospitals are entitled to very special protection under international humanitarian law," he added. "And the intentional killing of civilians, detainees, and others who are hors de combat is a war crime."
"Every 10 minutes a child is killed or wounded. They are protected under the laws of war, and yet they are ones who are disproportionately paying the ultimate price."
The IDF's destructive attacks on Nasser and al-Shifa were part of a broader Israeli assault on Gaza's healthcare system. An analysis released Monday by Save the Children found that the rate of monthly Israeli attacks on healthcare in Gaza since October has exceeded that of any other conflict around the world since 2018.
The group estimated that Israel has launched an average of 73 attacks per month on healthcare in Gaza—and at least 435 attacks total since October.
"After six months of unimaginable horror, the healthcare system in Gaza has been brought to its knees," said Xavier Joubert, Save the Children's country director in the occupied Palestinian territory. "Healthcare workers are risking their lives daily to give Palestinian children a chance at survival. The constant attacks on healthcare are simply unjustifiable and must stop. Palestinian children must have unimpeded access to services, including healthcare and education."
Türk also used his statement Tuesday to condemn Israeli forces' killing of women and children in airstrikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah in recent days. The human rights official noted that Gaza doctors rescued a baby from the womb of her mother as the latter succumbed to head injuries from an Israeli strike.
"The latest images of a premature child taken from the womb of her dying mother, of the adjacent two houses where 15 children and five women were killed—this is beyond warfare," said Türk. "Every 10 minutes a child is killed or wounded. They are protected under the laws of war, and yet they are ones who are disproportionately paying the ultimate price in this war."
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'Shameful': UK Conservatives Push Through Plan to Deport Asylum-Seekers to Rwanda
"The U.K. government could literally pay every refugee a £30,000 annual salary for life, and it would be cheaper," said one critic. "We're burning money just to enjoy the cruelty."
Apr 23, 2024
Legal and human rights experts on Tuesday said the British Conservative Party's decision to push through a bill allowing the government to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda—effectively overriding last year's Supreme Court ruling—represented a "desperate low" from lawmakers eager to exploit migrants ahead of elections expected later this year.
"A lot of this is performative cruelty," Daniel Merriman, a lawyer whose clients have included some asylum-seekers whom the Tories tried to deport after it first introduced its plan in 2022, toldNPR. "The elephant in the room is the upcoming election."
After a prolonged debate, the unelected House of Lords cleared the way to pass the Safety of Rwanda bill early Tuesday morning, after dropping several proposed amendments including one that would have required independent verification that the central African country is a safe place to send migrants.
The House of Commons then passed the bill, and King Charles III is expected to formally approve the legislation in the coming days.
The bill requires courts and immigration officials to "conclusively treat the Republic of Rwanda as a safe country" to send asylum-seekers, even though the Supreme Court ruled in November that people deported to the country would face a significant risk of refoulement, or being sent back to the countries where they originally fled persecution or violence.
The Conservative government signed a treaty with Rwanda last December to strengthen protections for asylum-seekers, including a provision that partially bans Rwanda from sending people back to their home countries.
But the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) called on the U.K. to abandon the plan and instead "take practical measures to address irregular flows of refugees and migrants, based on international cooperation and respect for international human rights law."
"The new legislation marks a further step away from the U.K.'s long tradition of providing refuge to those in need, in breach of the Refugee Convention," said Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees. "Protecting refugees requires all countries—not just those neighboring crisis zones—to uphold their obligations. This arrangement seeks to shift responsibility for refugee protection, undermining international cooperation and setting a worrying global precedent."
"The U.K. has a proud history of effective, independent judicial scrutiny," Grandi added. "It can still take the right steps and put in place measures to help address the factors that drive people to leave home, and share responsibility for those in need of protection, with European and other international partners."
Dorothy Guerrero, head of policy and advocacy at Global Justice Now, noted that "disastrous foreign and economic policies of successive governments have contributed to the need for people to seek refuge."
"These same people's lives are continually used as a political football, after years of being scapegoats for bad government decisions," said Guerrero. "Statements from politicians are now even more blatantly devoid of any pretense of care for human rights. We will not stop pushing for a change of course, with safe routes to seek asylum in the U.K. so that people no longer have to risk their lives in the Channel."
"The passing of the Rwanda Bill is a shameful day for the U.K.," she added.
Hours after the legislation was passed, French officials announced that at least five people, including a seven-year-old child, had been killed while attempting to cross the English Channel, bound for the U.K. in an overloaded inflatable boat.
At The New Statesman, associate political editor Rachel Cunliffe wrote Tuesday that the tragedy reveals "the flaws of the Rwanda plan," which proponents say could deter migrants from seeking refuge in Britain.
Proponents of the Rwanda plan will inevitably point to today's disaster as further evidence that strong measures are needed to address the issue of Channel crossings. They will accuse Labour and opposition parties of ignoring the human cost of letting this crisis continue and argue that lives are at stake if the government does not act.
[...]
The reality is that a substantial number of people who pay people traffickers large sums of money to crowd them on to a tiny boat do so because they feel they have no other option. Fleeing war and persecution, they are desperate. And so they are prepared to take desperate measures. Measures that sometimes lead to tragedy, but which are deemed necessary given the hopelessness of their situation.
It is hard to see how the threat to send a tiny fraction of those who arrive (Rwanda has said it will only take 150-200 migrants) changes this calculation.
The Labour Party, which is leading Conservatives in polls ahead of the expected elections, has vowed to scrap the legislation if it wins control of the government later this year, and critics have expressed doubt that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will actually secure deportation flights before Britons vote.
One flight was grounded in June 2022 after the European Court of Human Rights intervened, and on Monday the OHCHR warned aviation authorities that they would risk violating international law if they allow "unlawful removals" of asylum-seekers to Rwanda.
Critics have also pointed to a finding by the National Audit Office that the deportations would cost £1.8 million ($2.2 million) per person.
"The U.K. government could literally pay every refugee a £30,000 annual salary for life, and it would be cheaper than sending them to Rwanda," said David Andress, a history professor at the University of Portsmouth. "We're burning money just to enjoy the cruelty."
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