politics | Human rights for all.... (Reply)

We'll start with protests that are being held by minorities demanding recognition of their rights by the majority government:

BANGLADESH

Ethnic communities demand recognition of 'indigenous' in Bangladesh constitution

HUNDREDS AND thousands of ethnic minorities in Bangladesh formed human chain on Saturday (March 19) demanding constitutional recognition of their existence as “indigenous” population.

A senior parliamentarian remarked that ethnic minorities are not “indigenous” after holding series consultation with elected representatives who represents ethnic communities.

Last week a special parliamentary committee on constitutional amendment recommends the community will be known as “ethnic minorities”, short of recognizing them as “indigenous” (Adivasi in local language).

The refusal angered the ethnic leaders, social justice activists and right groups. The ethnic communities are less than one percent of the national population of 158.6 million. The struggle for constitutional recognition goes back 40 years ago, soon after Bangladesh gained independence in 1971. The political regime, civil and military bureaucracy are dominated by majoritarian Bangla-speaking Sunni Muslims known as Bangalees.

The 1991 census of the government identified 29 small ethnic groups, but the leaders claim that 46 small ethnic groups live in Bangladesh, mainly in south-east Chittagong Hill Tracts region.

The protest rally organized by Bangladesh Adivasi Forum was simultaneously held in the capital Dhaka, Rangamati, Khagrachari, Patuakhali, Sylhet and other places where the ethnic communities are visible population.MORE

KUWAIT

Heavy security succeeds in quashing bedoon protests

KUWAIT: A heavy police presence in Taima helped to prevent any bedoon (stateless) demonstrators from gathering to protest for their rights on Friday, according to a security official. Speaking to Al-Qabas on condition of anonymity, the security official said that riot police sealed off several entrances to the area and maintained a large-scale presence after receiving reports that activists had called for a demonstration by bedoon people. The security operation helped to ensure that no protesters turned up
, the official said.

According to the tip-off received by police, activists had called for a demonstration following Friday prayers, similar to the harshly quashed protests there and in Sulaibiya in recent weeks at which bedoons called for basic human rights. As on previous occasions, police quickly swung into action, imposing a cordon around the area and massing in large numbers to ensure that any protest was similarly quashed. MORE

GUATEMALA

Violent Development: Communities Defending Lands and Resources Face Ongoing Repression in Guatemala

On February 28, 2011, organized action by Indigenous community members was once again met with violence in Guatemala.

The action was organized by local community organizations in the municipality of San Miguel Ixtahuacan, where Goldcorp's Marlin mine is located, in the highlands of San Marcos, Guatemala. The goal of the demonstration was to pressure the Guatemalan government to comply with precautionary measures issued by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in May 2010, and particularly the temporary suspension of the Marlin mine.
MORE

And then we hit those who want widescale change in their governmental processes:

JORDAN
Hundreds of Jordanians demonstrate despite Saturday's start of national dialogue on reform

AMMAN, Jordan — Hundreds of Jordanians calling for reforms demonstrated peacefully Friday, rejecting the beginning of a national dialogue as insufficient.

It was the 11th straight week of Friday protests.

On Saturday, the first meeting of the dialogue committee is set to start work on reforms in Jordan's regime, in which the king has the final say on important issues, though the parliament is an elected body.

The demonstrators say the parliament was chosen through a distorted map of election districts favoring the backers of King Abdullah II, and it must be replaced.

The king has given the 53-member committee three months to draft new laws for parliamentary elections and political parties.MORE

Loyalty and poverty: Jordan’s uprising stagnates

Jordan is not at breaking point yet, but of all the protests sweeping across the Middle East, those in Jordan have been going on for the longest. Indeed, marches through Amman's windy streets began on 14 January and show no sign of ceasing even now, in mid-March, due to the slow adoption of reforms.

Jordan's is an interesting case, because it is one of just two monarchies in the region which has experienced sustained protests (the other country being Bahrain). Conversely, it is also one of the highest-scoring Arab nations on the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2010 Democracy Index, with a rating of 3.74 – more than the seemingly stable regimes of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Unsurprisingly, then, the roots of the Jordanian protests are to be found more in relation to economic justice than the problems of authoritarian rule. That is not to say there is not a problem with authoritarian rule in Jordan; it is more that the way the monarchy is viewed tends to ignore its role in relation to national troubles.MORE

MOROCCO
Thousands in Morocco march for rights

Thousands took to the streets in cities across Morocco on Sunday demanding better civil rights and an end to corruption in the moderate North African country where the king this month promised constitutional reform.

"Morocco should start drawing some serious lessons from what's happening around it," said Bouchta Moussaif, who was among at least two thousand people marching alongside the city's medieval walls in the capital Rabat.

Thousands joined protests in Casablanca, the country's biggest city, in Tangiers in the north, and in Agadir on the Atlantic coast where witness Hafsa Oubou said several thousands were marching.MORe

BAHRAIN

When Petro-Dictators Unite: The Bahraini Opposition struggle for survival

The GCC’s Peninsula Shield Forces—composed mainly of Saudi, but also Qatari and Emirati troops—officially entered Bahrain on Monday March 14^th, 2011. While their stated goal is to protect Bahraini government and oil facilities, the level of indiscriminate state violence against unarmed civilians in the last few days has been unprecedented.

....

While the Bahraini regime purports to still be committed to dialogue, its forces have launched a systematic attack against many members of the formal opposition, protesters, and those who have publicly criticized the ruling family. Security forces have already raided the homes of the members of the “group of 25.” According to the BBC, sixty people have been missing since Wednesday, whereas the Al Manama Voice puts the total number of those missing at 115, thirty-five of whom have been found while eighty remain unaccounted for. As a recent tweet by @Nabeelrajab put it, “As Bahrain arrests the opposition leaders, no one is left for dialogue.” Activists Abdul-Jalil Alsingace and Mohammad Sultan—a BCHR member who is suffering from a brain tumor—were both arrested. Ali Abdulemam, the Bahraini “blog father,” and Ali al-Yaseen, who called Bahrain TV accusing it of inciting sectarianism and maintaining a media blackout in Bahrain, are both missing. Isa Al Radhi had been missing for five days, when on Friday the military hospital contacted his family to collect his body. Many others, whose names are not known, have suffered the same fates. So far, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have condemned the detention of at least eight activists and protest leaders. As details of disappearances and detentions continue to emerge, there seems to be a systematic attempt at torturing some of those in the regime’s “custody” both to deter them from further political activity as well as to extract information on others deemed threatening by the regime.MORE

Bahrain medics claim army cover-up:Staff at a hospital in Manama say police arrest & beat-up doctors, nurses and patients.

According to medics at Salmania hospital in the capital Manama, the security forces surrounded the hospital and disallowed people, including patients, health workers and even ambulance staff, to enter or leave the facility.

The hospital staff have told Al Jazeera that doctors and nurses were beaten up and that many doctors were still under arrest. Many patients were also allegedly attacked by the military.
MORE

Bahrain's main opposition groups ease demands

Led by the largest Shi'ite opposition party Wefaq, they called late on Saturday on security forces to free all those detained in the wake of a month of protests, end their crackdown and ask Gulf Arab troops to leave so talks could begin.

"Prepare a healthy atmosphere for the start of political dialogue between the opposition and the government on a basis that can put our country on the track to real democracy and away from the abyss," their statement said.

The group appeared to retreat from much more ambitious conditions for talks it set last week, including the creation of a new government not dominated by royals and the establishment of a special elected council to redraft Bahrain's constitution.

The new conditions, which also include ending sectarian rhetoric and removing forces who have surrounded a major hospital in recent days, would bring the political process back to the position it was in before the uprising began a month ago.MORE

YEMEN

Human rights minister and UN ambassador quit, Clerics urge Yemen army to ignore orders

Muslim clerics urged Yemeni soldiers to disobey orders and a third minister resigned after the gunning down of more than 50 protesters calling for an end to President's Ali Abdullah Saleh's rule.

Leading clerics said Saleh was responsible for the slaughter following Muslim prayers in Sanaa on Friday, the worst day of bloodshed in more a month of violent unrest. "We call on the army and security forces to not carry out any order from anyone to kill and repress" demonstrators, a group of influential clerics in the deeply religious country said in a joint statement.MORE

SYRIA

Syria protesters torch buildings

Crowds have set fire to the courthouse and other buildings on a third straight day of demonstrations in the southern Syrian city of Daraa.

Residents said one person was killed and scores injured when security forces used live rounds against protesters. Witnesses said dozens were also taken to be treated for tear gas inhalation at the main Omari mosque.

Thousands took to the streets on Sunday, calling for an end to corruption and 48 years of emergency law and to protest the killing of five civilians in a similar demonstration two days earlier.

The headquarters of the ruling Baath party was set ablaze as well as two phone company branches. One of the firms, Syriatel, is owned by President Bashar al-Assad's cousin Rami Makhlouf, who is under specific US sanctions for what Washington regards as public corruption.
MORe

LIBYA

Interventionists Struggle to Reconcile Libyan Action with Repression Across Arab World

The fact that you can watch US officials on television saying that they have to “learn more” about the Libyan opposition while military aircraft are in the air facilitating their entry into power should be pretty distressing. And the answer here is pretty clear: the people who argued for attacks on Libya aren’t going to be satisfied with a detente, with Gadhafi in Tripoli and a Free Benghazi. This cannot help but escalate. And America tends to have their feet trapped in molasses when they set foot in a foreign land.

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But all this context is relevant as an indictment of the elite leadership class of the United States of America. If everyone cares as much about the political rights of Arabs as Libya interventionists say, then what on earth are they doing in Bahrain and Yemen and Palestine? If everyone cares as much about the loss of innocent African life as Libya interventionists say, then what on earth are they doing ponying up so little in foreign aid and doing so little to dismantle ruinous cotton subsidies? These aren’t really points about Libya. And why should they be? What do I know about Libya? What does Chait know about Libya? These are points about the United States of America and the various elites who run the country and shape the discourse. Exactly the kinds of subjects that frequent participants in American political debates know and care about. I see no particular reason to think that Libya will have any impact on malaria funding, but I do think the level of malaria funding is impacted over the long term by the existence of a substantial number of people (of which Chait is one) who seem to advocate for humanitarian goals in Africa if and only if those goals can be advanced through the use of military force to kill other Africans.

So I hope this Libya policy works out. I have my doubts, but who knows. The world is full of surprises. I do know, however, that providing more bed nets to prevent malaria would be cheap and logistically simple compared to deposing Gaddafi and that the easiest step America could take to deal a blow to Arab autocracy would be to stop selling weapons to Arab autocrats that they turn around and fire on their people.MORE

But you don’t understand the genius of this Matt, when we have to destroy the weapons systems that we sell to Arab autocrats, we know precisely how to disable them! It’s very efficient.

Speaking of: European arms sales to Libya: Who armed Gaddafi?

Which EU countries armed Libya under Gaddafi? The EU arms sales to Libya statistics, collected by the European Union, are not exactly public knowledge.
We only know about them because of some excellent work by Dan O'Huiggin, who found the complete breakdown of EU military exports in some distant corner of the Europa website and published a breakdown of 2009, the latest year available.
The data, only available as a PDF, is tricky to export but we bring you the latest five years here. It covers from 2005 (the first year after the end of the arms embargo in 2004) right up to 2009.MORE

EU arms sales to Libya: fleshing out the figures

There's no doubt that European weapons are today being used to kill Libyans.
Journalists across Europe are now fleshing out the details, figuring out whodunnit and how. Here's a summary of what they've found so far...
Start with the official figures: €343 million of weapons sold in 2009 alone. The EU Observer, Deutsche Welle and Der Spiegel summarize those numbers and examine what is behind them. They speculate, for example, that the €43m of German electrical exports includes jamming equipment used to block the mobile phone and GPS networks.
Italy is the biggest exporter: they officially sold Libya €111m of weapons, but are also responsible for €80m of firearms dubiously licensed through Malta. The Corriere della Sera has found a government report detailing the Italian companies involved, which Sky News summarizes in English:MORe