Topic: Human rights (Page 3)

You are looking at all articles with the topic "Human rights". We found 38 matches.

Hint: To view all topics, click here. Too see the most popular topics, click here instead.

πŸ”— Gay concentration camps in Chechnya (April 2017)

πŸ”— Human rights πŸ”— Russia πŸ”— Crime πŸ”— Religion πŸ”— Islam πŸ”— LGBT studies πŸ”— Sociology πŸ”— Chechnya πŸ”— Discrimination πŸ”— Correction and Detention Facilities πŸ”— Sexology and sexuality

Anti-gay purges in the Chechen Republic, a part of the Russian Federation, have included forced disappearances β€” secret abductions, imprisonment, torture β€” and extrajudicial killing by authorities targeting persons based on their perceived sexual orientation. An unknown number of people, who authorities detained on suspicion of being gay or bisexual, have reportedly died after being held in what human rights groups and eyewitnesses have called concentration camps.

Allegations were initially reported on 1 April 2017 in Novaya Gazeta, a Russian-language opposition newspaper, which reported that since February 2017 over 100 men had allegedly been detained and tortured and at least three had died in an extrajudicial killing. The paper, citing its sources in the Chechen special services, called the wave of detentions a "prophylactic sweep". The journalist who first reported on the subject went into hiding. There have been calls for reprisals against journalists who report on the situation.

As news spread of Chechen authorities' actions, which have been described as part of a systematic anti-LGBT purge, Russian and international activists scrambled to evacuate survivors of the camps and other vulnerable Chechens but were met with difficulty obtaining visas to conduct them safely beyond Russia.

The reports of the persecution were met with a variety of reactions worldwide. The Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov denied not only the occurrence of any persecution but also the existence of gay men in Chechnya, adding that such people would be killed by their own families. Officials in Moscow were skeptical, although in late May the Russian government reportedly agreed to send an investigative team to Chechnya. Numerous national leaders and other public figures in the West condemned Chechnya's actions, and protests were held in Russia and elsewhere. A report released in December 2018 by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) confirmed claims that persecution of LGBT persons had taken place and was ignored by authorities.

On 11 January 2019, it was reported that another 'gay purge' had begun in the country in December 2018, with several gay men and women being detained. The Russian LGBT Network believes that around 40 persons were detained and two killed.

Discussed on

πŸ”— Katyn Massacre (1940)

πŸ”— Human rights πŸ”— Soviet Union πŸ”— Russia πŸ”— Military history πŸ”— Crime πŸ”— Death πŸ”— Socialism πŸ”— Poland πŸ”— Military history/World War II πŸ”— Military history/Russian, Soviet and CIS military history πŸ”— Russia/history of Russia πŸ”— Military history/Polish military history πŸ”— Military history/European military history

The Katyn massacre (Polish: zbrodnia katyΕ„ska, "KatyΕ„ crime"; Russian: ΠšΠ°Ρ‚Ρ‹Π½ΡΠΊΠ°Ρ рСзня Katynskaya reznya, "Katyn massacre", or Russian: ΠšΠ°Ρ‚Ρ‹Π½ΡΠΊΠΈΠΉ расстрСл, "Katyn execution by shooting") was a series of mass executions of about 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligentsia carried out by the Soviet Union, specifically the NKVD ("People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs", the Soviet secret police) in April and May 1940. Though the killings also occurred in the Kalinin and Kharkiv prisons and elsewhere, the massacre is named after the Katyn Forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered.

The massacre was initiated in NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria's proposal of 5 March 1940 to execute all captive members of the Polish officer corps, approved by the Soviet Politburo led by Joseph Stalin. Of the total killed, about 8,000 were officers imprisoned during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, another 6,000 were police officers, and the remaining 8,000 were Polish intelligentsia the Soviets deemed to be "intelligence agents, gendarmes, landowners, saboteurs, factory owners, lawyers, officials, and priests". The Polish Army officer class was representative of the multi-ethnic Polish state; the murdered included ethnic Poles, Polish Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Polish Jews including the Chief Rabbi of the Polish Army, Baruch Steinberg.

The government of Nazi Germany announced the discovery of mass graves in the Katyn Forest in April 1943. Stalin severed diplomatic relations with the London-based Polish government-in-exile when it asked for an investigation by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The USSR claimed the Nazis had killed the victims, and it continued to deny responsibility for the massacres until 1990, when it officially acknowledged and condemned the killings by the NKVD, as well as the subsequent cover-up by the Soviet government.

An investigation conducted by the office of the Prosecutors General of the Soviet Union (1990–1991) and the Russian Federation (1991–2004) confirmed Soviet responsibility for the massacres, but refused to classify this action as a war crime or as an act of mass murder. The investigation was closed on the grounds the perpetrators were dead, and since the Russian government would not classify the dead as victims of the Great Purge, formal posthumous rehabilitation was deemed inapplicable.

In November 2010, the Russian State Duma approved a declaration blaming Stalin and other Soviet officials for ordering the massacre.

Discussed on

πŸ”— Anna Politkovskaya

πŸ”— Biography πŸ”— Human rights πŸ”— Russia πŸ”— Russia/mass media in Russia πŸ”— Politics πŸ”— Guild of Copy Editors πŸ”— Women writers πŸ”— Biography/arts and entertainment πŸ”— Biography/politics and government πŸ”— Journalism πŸ”— Ukraine πŸ”— Russia/politics and law of Russia πŸ”— Russia/history of Russia

Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya (Russian: Анна Π‘Ρ‚Π΅ΠΏΠ°Π½ΠΎΠ²Π½Π° ΠŸΠΎΠ»ΠΈΡ‚ΠΊΠΎΠ²ΡΠΊΠ°Ρ, IPA:Β [ˈanːə sΚ²tΚ²ΙͺˈpanΙ™vnΙ™ pΙ™lΚ²ΙͺtˈkofskΙ™jΙ™]; Ukrainian: Π“Π°Π½Π½Π° Π‘Ρ‚Π΅ΠΏΠ°Π½Ρ–Π²Π½Π° ΠŸΠΎΠ»Ρ–Ρ‚ΠΊΠΎΠ²ΡΡŒΠΊΠ°, IPA:Β [ΛˆΙ¦Ι‘nːɐ steˈpΙ‘n⁽ʲ⁾iuΜ―nɐ pol⁽ʲ⁾itˈkΙ”uΜ―sΚ²kɐ]; nΓ©e Mazepa, МазСпа, IPA:Β [mɐˈzΙ›pɐ]; 30 August 1958 – 7 October 2006) was a Russian journalist, and human rights activist, who reported on political events in Russia, in particular, the Second Chechen War (1999–2005).

It was her reporting from Chechnya that made Politkovskaya's national and international reputation. For seven years, she refused to give up reporting on the war despite numerous acts of intimidation and violence. Politkovskaya was arrested by Russian military forces in Chechnya and subjected to a mock execution. She was poisoned while flying from Moscow via Rostov-on-Don to help resolve the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis, and had to turn back, requiring careful medical treatment in Moscow to restore her health.

Her post-1999 articles about conditions in Chechnya were turned into books several times; Russian readers' main access to her investigations and publications was through Novaya Gazeta, a Russian newspaper that featured critical investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs. From 2000 onwards, she received numerous international awards for her work. In 2004, she published Putin's Russia, a personal account of Russia for a Western readership.

On 7 October 2006, she was murdered in the elevator of her block of apartments, an assassination that attracted international attention. In June 2014, five men were sentenced to prison for the murder, but it is still unclear who ordered or paid for the contract killing.

Discussed on

πŸ”— Select Parts of the Bible for the Use of the Slaves in the British West-India

πŸ”— Human rights πŸ”— Bible πŸ”— England

Select Parts of the Holy Bible for the use of the Negro Slaves in the British West-India Islands, sometimes referred to as a slave bible, is an abbreviated version of the Bible specifically made for teaching a pro-slavery version of Christianity to enslaved people in the British West Indies.

πŸ”— Tuskegee Syphilis Study

πŸ”— Human rights πŸ”— Medicine πŸ”— History of Science πŸ”— Alabama πŸ”— Science Policy πŸ”— Nursing

The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male (informally referred to as the Tuskegee Experiment or Tuskegee Syphilis Study) was a study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the United States Public Health Service (PHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on a group of nearly 400 African American men with syphilis. The purpose of the study was to observe the effects of the disease when untreated, though by the end of the study medical advancements meant it was entirely treatable. The men were not informed of the nature of the experiment, and more than 100 died as a result.

The Public Health Service started the study in 1932 in collaboration with Tuskegee University (then the Tuskegee Institute), a historically Black college in Alabama. In the study, investigators enrolled a total of 600 impoverished African-American sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama. Of these men, 399 had latent syphilis, with a control group of 201 men who were not infected. As an incentive for participation in the study, the men were promised free medical care. While the men were provided with both medical and mental care that they otherwise would not have received, they were deceived by the PHS, who never informed them of their syphilis diagnosis and provided disguised placebos, ineffective methods, and diagnostic procedures as treatment for "bad blood".

The men were initially told that the experiment was only going to last six months, but it was extended to 40 years. After funding for treatment was lost, the study was continued without informing the men that they would never be treated. None of the infected men were treated with penicillin despite the fact that, by 1947, the antibiotic was widely available and had become the standard treatment for syphilis.

The study continued, under numerous Public Health Service supervisors, until 1972, when a leak to the press resulted in its termination on November 16 of that year. By then, 28 patients had died directly from syphilis, 100 died from complications related to syphilis, 40 of the patients' wives were infected with syphilis, and 19 children were born with congenital syphilis.

The 40-year Tuskegee Study was a major violation of ethical standards and has been cited as "arguably the most infamous biomedical research study in U.S. history." Its revelation led to the 1979 Belmont Report and to the establishment of the Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) and federal laws and regulations requiring institutional review boards for the protection of human subjects in studies. The OHRP manages this responsibility within the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Its revelation has also been an important cause of distrust in medical science and the US government amongst African Americans.

On May 16, 1997, President Bill Clinton formally apologized on behalf of the United States to victims of the study, calling it shameful and racist. "What was done cannot be undone, but we can end the silence," he said. "We can stop turning our heads away. We can look at you in the eye, and finally say, on behalf of the American people, what the United States government did was shameful and I am sorry."

Discussed on

πŸ”— Considered for deletion – Mass killings under communist regimes

πŸ”— Human rights πŸ”— Soviet Union πŸ”— History πŸ”— Death πŸ”— Politics πŸ”— Socialism πŸ”— Soviet Union/history of Russia πŸ”— Soviet Union/Russia

Mass killings under communist regimes occurred throughout the 20th century. Death estimates vary widely, depending on the definitions of the deaths that are included in them. The higher estimates of mass killings account for the crimes that governments committed against civilians, including executions, the destruction of populations through man-made hunger and deaths that occurred during forced deportations and imprisonment, and deaths that resulted from forced labor.

In addition to "mass killings," terms that are used to define such killings include "democide", "politicide", "classicide", and "genocide."

Discussed on

πŸ”— Uyghur Genocide

πŸ”— Human rights πŸ”— Mass surveillance πŸ”— History πŸ”— Crime πŸ”— Death πŸ”— China πŸ”— Philosophy πŸ”— Politics πŸ”— Philosophy/Social and political philosophy πŸ”— Islam πŸ”— Central Asia πŸ”— Anthropology πŸ”— Sociology πŸ”— Discrimination πŸ”— Philosophy/Ethics πŸ”— Ethnic groups πŸ”— History/Contemporary History πŸ”— China/Chinese politics

The Uyghur genocide is the ongoing series of human rights abuses perpetrated by the government of China against the Uyghur people and other ethnic and religious minorities in and around the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of the People's Republic of China. Since 2014, the Chinese government, under the direction of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during the administration of CCP general secretary Xi Jinping, has pursued policies leading to more than one million Muslims (the majority of them Uyghurs) being held in secretive internment camps without any legal process in what has become the largest-scale and most systematic detention of ethnic and religious minorities since the Holocaust and World War II. Thousands of mosques have been destroyed or damaged, and hundreds of thousands of children have been forcibly separated from their parents and sent to boarding schools.

These policies have been described by critics as the forced assimilation of Xinjiang, as well as an ethnocide or cultural genocide. Some governments, activists, independent NGOs, human rights experts, academics, government officials, and the East Turkistan Government-in-Exile have called it a genocide.

In particular, critics have highlighted the concentration of Uyghurs in state-sponsored internment camps, suppression of Uyghur religious practices, political indoctrination, severe ill-treatment, as well as extensive evidence and other testimonials detailing human rights abuses including forced sterilization, contraception, abortion, and infanticides. Chinese government statistics show that from 2015 to 2018, birth rates in the mostly Uyghur regions of Hotan and Kashgar fell by more than 60%. In the same period, the birth rate of the whole country decreased by 9.69%, from 12.07 to 10.9 per 1,000 people. Chinese authorities acknowledged that birth rates dropped by almost a third in 2018 in Xinjiang, but denied reports of forced sterilization and genocide. Birth rates fell nearly 24% in 2019 (compared to a nationwide decrease of just 4.2%).

International reactions have been sharply divided, with dozens of United Nations (UN) member states issuing opposing letters to the United Nations Human Rights Council in support and condemnation of China's policies in Xinjiang in 2020. In December 2020, the International Criminal Court declined to take investigative action against China on the basis of not having jurisdiction over China for most of the alleged crimes. The United States was the first country to declare the human rights abuses a genocide, announcing its determination on January 19, 2021, although the US State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser concluded that there was insufficient evidence to prove genocide. This was followed by Canada's House of Commons and the Dutch parliament each passing a non-binding motion in February 2021 to recognize China's actions as genocide. Later, in April 2021, the United Kingdom's House of Commons unanimously passed a non-binding motion to recognize the actions as genocide. In May 2021 the New Zealand parliament unanimously declared that "severe human rights abuses" were occurring against the Uyghur people in China and the Seimas of Lithuania passed a resolution that recognized the Chinese government's abuse of the Uyghurs as a genocide.

πŸ”— Nothwithstanding Clause lets Canadian Provinces violate Constitutional rights

πŸ”— Human rights πŸ”— Canada πŸ”— Law πŸ”— Canada/Canadian law

Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is part of the Constitution of Canada. It is commonly known as the notwithstanding clause (French: clause dΓ©rogatoire or clause nonobstant), sometimes referred to as the override power, and it allows Parliament or provincial legislatures to temporarily override sections 2 and 7–15 of the Charter.

πŸ”— Organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China

πŸ”— Human rights πŸ”— Medicine πŸ”— Religion πŸ”— Death πŸ”— China πŸ”— Religion/New religious movements πŸ”— Religion/Falun Gong

Reports of forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners and other political prisoners in China have raised increasing concern within the international community. According to a report by former lawmaker David Kilgour, human rights campaigner David Matas and Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation researcher Ethan Gutmann, political prisoners, mainly Falun Gong practitioners, may be executed "on demand" in order to provide organs for transplant to recipients.

Reports on systematic organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners first emerged in 2006, though the practice is thought by some to have started six years earlier. Several researchersβ€”most notably Matas, Kilgour and Gutmannβ€”estimate that tens of thousands of Falun Gong prisoners of conscience have been killed to supply a lucrative trade in human organs and cadavers and that these abuses may be ongoing. These conclusions are based on a combination of statistical analysis; interviews with former prisoners, medical authorities and public security agents; and circumstantial evidence, such as the large number of Falun Gong practitioners detained extrajudicially in China and the profits to be made from selling organs.

The Chinese government long denied all accusations of organ harvesting. However, the failure of Chinese authorities to effectively address or refute the charges has drawn attention and public condemnation from some governments, international organizations and medical societies. The parliaments of Canada and the European Union, as well as the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, have adopted resolutions condemning the forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong prisoners of conscience. United Nations Special Rapporteurs have called on the Chinese government to account for the sources of organs used in transplant practices, and the World Medical Association, the American Society of Transplantation and the Transplantation Society have called for sanctions on Chinese medical authorities. Several countries have also taken or considered measures to deter their citizens from travelling to China for the purpose of obtaining organs. A documentary on organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners, Human Harvest, received a 2014 Peabody Award recognizing excellence in broadcast journalism. China eventually admitted that it had engaged in systematic organ harvesting from death row prisoners, though it denies that such an organ harvesting program is ongoing.