Human Rights Watch - Tumblr Posts
Attention, this is not a joke but a killing joke,
Saudi Arabia takes over chairmanship of UN Commission on the Status of Women - human rights activists appalled.
Louis Charbonneau of Human Rights Watch made it clear on X (formerly Twitter): "Saudi Arabia's election to head the UN Commission on the Status of Women shows a shocking disregard for women's rights everywhere." A country that already imprisons women for fighting for women's rights has no right to such a post, Charbonneau continued.
He also criticised the other countries in the Commission for not preventing the change. "If everyone had stood up straight, this wouldn't have happened. But everyone kept quiet."
How can something like this go so wrong?
Abdulaziz Alwasil, Saudi Arabia's UN envoy, will be the chairman. According to the Guardian, none of the envoys from 45 countries raised any objections to his nomination at the CSW's annual meeting. There were also no opposing candidates.
The Philippines actually held the chairmanship for two years. However, other members from Asia had urged the country to hand over the seat after one year. Bangladesh had actually been intended as the successor, but instead Saudi Arabia pushed its way to the top with a lot of lobbying.
Let's put it plainly: everyone has let themselves be bought by a world of greed and corruption! That's what the nice, generous Saudis love. They simply buy influence and culture, football, golf, ...... pukes sorry
Saudi Arabia is trying to polish up its image to the outside world with reforms such as allowing women to drive.
What a charade, makeup on the ugly face of the unjust state.
Hooray, the goat has been declared a garden.
And they are about to prove to the saudis what they think of women's rights.
Completely nothing
Case: Manahil al-Utaibi
Fitness trainer faces eleven years in prison in Saudi Arabia
There have been some makeup reforms in Saudi Arabia recently. The country wants to appear cosmopolitan. At the same time, critics are silenced with long prison sentences. The case of a young fitness trainer is apparently no exception.
According to human rights activists, a female activist in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to eleven years in prison for her choice of clothing and support for women's rights. Manahil al-Utaibi was sentenced in January - more than a year after her arrest - by a special court for terrorism, the organisation Amnesty International announced on Tuesday evening.
The accusations against the 29-year-old fitness trainer related to her clothing and her calls on social networks to end the male guardianship system in the kingdom. She had also published videos of herself without the traditional Abaja overdress.
Saudi Arabia's government confirmed the arrest in December following an enquiry into the case by a UN special rapporteur. Al-Utaibi had been convicted of "terror offences", it said. The country's laws would protect the right to freedom of expression unless actions could "violate or exceed the limits of public order or social norms".
The last sentence immediately made us think of George Orwell! Freedom of expression with limits is good!
Amnesty International and the human rights organisation ALQST urged the kingdom to release Al-Utaibi immediately and unconditionally. According to them, she was physically and psychologically abused in detention following her arrest in November 2022. In addition, she was held in an unknown location for several months.
Well, chairmanship of UN Commission on the Status of Women
How is the status of Al-Utaibi ?
One of the representatives of nice Mohammed bin Salman, who simply had a journalist killed and dismembered in Turkey.
Shit, nobody would believe that in a novel, if you want to write a novel like that at all.
The new human injustice game for women's rights only. Now new from the nice grinning man who rules Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia rights vs women's rights
The New Game
There is only one dice with over all one on it for the women
A stack of cards with a card for women on it say go to jail for a long time and lose your wife and even your bonus human rights.
The Saudis always have one more bonus card when they need it where it says we always win.
A board of politicians, police, special courts, torturers, prison and just an absolute terrorist suspect wife.
Start of the game: The woman catches and does something really stupid she thinks she's women right, and Saudi Arabia wins.
Game idea from the makers I have a journalist killed in Turkey and nobody can catch me : Moammed bin Salman.
Recently, 227 out of 290 members of Iran parliament voted to execute those who were arrested in the past 8 weeks of uprising. According to Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), the number of arrested protesters are more than 14,000 people. Islamic republic has a long history of mass murders. In the 1988 massacres of political prisoners, more than 30,000 people were executed. In 2019 protests, the government killed more than 1,500 protesters during the internet shutdown. They never stop their criminal ways because blood and bone is the foundation of their reign.
These people, who have the dream of freedom in mind, are going to be sentenced to death if international human rights organizations don't do something about it. We're not talking about nameless faceless people. These 14,000 lives have friends and families, pets and lovers. Let's get to know some of them:
This is Hossein Ronaghi. He is an iranian blogger and human rights activist. He's also a computer programmer and one of his activism areas is internet restrictions and how to go around them. He has a long history of political activities and since 2009 protests, he has been a political prisoner on and off. During current protests, he was called to turn himself into Evin prison or his family will be in danger, so he did that. But even though he was there voluntarily, security forces violently attacked him and beat him. Currently he's in prison with broken legs and no medical attention and a 46-day-long hunger strike. His life is in danger.
These are Elaheh Mohammadi and Niloofar Hamedi, the two journalists who covered Mahsa Amini's murder news. This is not the first time the government arrest and punish someone who spread a crime news instead of arresting those who committed said crime. Media freedom is a joke in Iran and those who speak the truth get silenced. A while ago in an interview with Shargh daily, the newspaper Niloofar works for, she addressed sexism in her field of occupation and explained: "sometimes a female journalist would think with herself maybe I should just give up this job, this job has many safety issues and the salary isn't good at all. but most of them stay. Women journalists never give up."
This is Fatemeh Sepehri, a political activist. She oppose Khamenei leadership and demands a democratic future for iran. She's a mother who lost her child custody to sexism. Her husband was a martyr of Iran-Iraq war. Her brother is also a political prisoner. She was kidnapped at the beginning of current protests and is being kept in solitary confinement.
This is Leyla Hosseinzade, former Tehran university student. She didn't believe in hijab and still doesn't. She refuse to wear hijab while in jail and that put her in a dangerous situation with security guards. She's currently on a hunger strike.
This is Faezeh Barahui, a young Baluchi girl who was arrested during protests in Zahedan, has been in prison for weeks.
This is Fetemeh Mashhadi Abbas, a professor in Shahid Beheshti university of medical sciences. She was kidnapped and is now being kept in Evin prison.
This is Toomaj Salehi, Iranian rapper who's songs are mostly protest songs aimed at the regime. He was brutally arrested and is under heavy torture at the moment.
This is Nazila Maroufian, a journalist who's in Evin prison because she interviewed with Mahsa Amini's father.
This is Marzieh Ziari, a women's rights activist in iran who was arrested and her current condition is unknown.
There are many many many more people. This is just a thin list of more known ones. According to HRANA, among all these arrested citizens, 1,941 of them have been identified and their arrests have become publicly known, 438 of them are university students. Children are among prisoners too but their number has not been reported. The wellbeing or placement of some prisoners are not known and that causes a lot of concerns.
sorry if this is a dumb question and i understand if you don't want to answer but do you have links to posts explaining why israel isn't an apartheid state? i swear i read posts like that on your blog before but i don't know how to refind them
Israeli Arabs have legal equality with Jews. Same restaurants, same pools, same seats on the bus, same voting rights. I would favorably compare the treatment of Israeli Arabs with that of any minority group in any country on Earth.
The West Bank has a military occupation, with (pretty fast) checkpoints and no right to vote about the government running that military. Military occupations are bad and some of us have been against this particular one for decades. The anti-occupation movement hasn't gotten anywhere, they've just been stuck. Being stuck in a military occupation for X more years doesn't make it apartheid, just like being stuck in a bad marriage for X more years doesn't make you divorced. Meanwhile, the 2020 Abraham Accords showed that multiple Arab states were willing to accept this unchanging status quo and deal with Israel as it is. Those two factors - the stagnant, unchanging nature of the occupation, and the clear loss of interest in the Palestinian cause - combined to have the latest crop of awareness-raising college interns at some shifty NGOs try to force change by abracadabra'ing together a new concept of "apartheid" that exists solely for Israel. And it is working, just like "Christ-killer" and "stabbed Germany in the back" worked.
In 2010, Human Rights Watch published an extremely critical report on Israel's occupation of the West Bank. Dragged them up one wall and down the other. Yet there was no accusation of "apartheid" there. In the report, page 33, they cited a lawsuit by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel that had said it was apartheid for the West Bank military occupation authorities to ban Palestinians from driving on Highway 443 after repeated firebombings / shootings against Israelis. The Israeli High Court ruled that it was inappropriate to ban Palestinians from the road, and it re-established their equal driving access - they have had it ever since. The court also said that the accusation of apartheid behind that now-ended ban was dishonest, because the security concerns were not based on race; there were and are no "Jewish-only" roads anywhere, even when WB Palestinians were denied road access, Israeli Arabs could and did drive there. The HRW 2010 report included a long summary of that finding, without challenge. As bad as they saw Israel, they agreed it wasn't apartheid.
Then in 2020 came the Abraham Accords, so while nothing at all had changed in the administration of the West Bank, in 2021 HRW said it actually was apartheid. It really is that simple. The most famous legal convention banning apartheid specifies that it is race-based. HRW instead went with a different legal convention on apartheid, one that says it could be based on national origin if it involves discrimination among citizens of the same country.... and then they up and added their own twist to that, saying they will consider it apartheid if there is discrimination based on national origin AMONG PEOPLE WHO AREN'T CITIZENS OF THE SAME COUNTRY. In a very real sense, HRW declared Mexico is an apartheid state because Americans can't vote in its elections.
In 2022, Amnesty International followed with their own report, saying that not only was the military occupation now "apartheid," but that Israel itself had been an apartheid state ever since it was established in 1948. This moral perversion had the effect of saying Israel literally INVENTED apartheid since in May 1948 it didn't even exist in South Africa yet. It also said that Amnesty International - founded 1961 - had been looking at an apartheid the whole time but never recognized it. To make things even more dishonest, Amnesty said they "are not claiming Israeli conditions are analogous to South Africa," meaning anything that shows how Israel is different from South Africa doesn't count. They're using the South African word for the South African policy but it's actually not like South Africa at all so be quiet, neener neener no backsies.
I shouldn't have to take that seriously. Neither should anyone. Palestinians and their advocates should be ashamed to have to lean on such an obvious bad-faith lie.
Nelson Mandela, who died in 2013, never once accused Israel of apartheid, and instead repeatedly said he supported Zionism and a 2-state solution. Mandela's lawyer, still alive, says the accusation is a lie. Mansour Abbas, leader of the Arab Islamist party that joined Israel's governing coalition in 2021, says the accusation is a lie. And if people want to bandy around NGO business cards, here is the International Committee of the Red Cross in 2017:
“The Red Cross was very familiar with the regime that prevailed in South Africa during the apartheid period, and we are responding to all those who raise their claim of apartheid against Israel: No, there is no apartheid here, no regime of superiority of race, of denial of basic human rights to a group of people because of their alleged racial inferiority. There is a bloody national conflict, whose most prominent and tragic characteristic is its continuation over the years, decades-long, and there is a state of occupation. Not apartheid.”
There's a lot more you can see about the shifty terminology, unreliable sourcing, and longstanding culture of antisemitism and racism within Amnesty International. People who can cite chapter and verse of why the Salvation Army, Autism Speaks, Chik-Fil-A and Harry Potter are problematic should not be shocked.