It was the first time that Cumpio’s words have been heard outside her prison cell in Tacloban City in the eastern Philippines. Cumpio was arrested in February 2020 and later charged over illegal possession of firearms and terrorism financing.

She faces up to 40 years in prison if found guilty.

“How do we even combat a well-orchestrated lie? A story that’s so absurd that if this was a class debate, you wouldn’t even try to rebut,” Cumpio said in her letter, which Khan read on Tuesday at a U.N. Human Rights Council side event about freedom of expression in the Philippines, co-hosted by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Cumpio’s letter was hand-carried to Khan in Geneva from the Philippines by CPJ’s Asia-Pacific
director Beh Lih Yi. Ronalyn Olea, secretary-general of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) was also present when the letter was handed over.

Khan, the U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of expression and opinion, called for Cumpio’s release at the U.N. on Tuesday and in her report to the UNHRC last week.

In 2024, the U.N. expert made an official visit to Cumpio and her co-accused Marielle Domequil, a church lay worker, in prison.

“She has been languishing in prison for five years, waiting for a trial for five years — that to me is a travesty of justice,” Khan said on Tuesday. “We need to stand with the Frenchies of this world.”

CPJ and the NUJP are part of the international #FreeFrenchieMaeCumpio coalition which includes the media rights groups AlterMidya, Reporters Without Borders, and Free Press Unlimited. The coalition was denied a joint prison visit to Cumpio in Tacloban City on June 16, with authorities citing documentary requirements.

Below is the extract from Cumpio’s letter read out by Khan:

“A lot has happened over a year [since Khan met Cumpio]. Marielle and I have already testified in court. I was presented three times. I am pleased to tell you that our lawyers have really exerted all of their efforts for our testimony.

Despite that I have to admit that nothing can really prepare you for your own trial.

At first, it felt like I didn’t really have anything to say. How do we even combat a well-orchestrated lie? A story that’s so absurd that if this was a class debate, you wouldn’t even try to rebut.

But after my testimony, I realised I still had a lot to say. That this more than five years of detention is robbing us of so many things — time, family, dreams, plans, future.

People call us brave for holding on, although I would have to admit I sometimes feel otherwise.

The truth is that what happened to us still happens to several others. The fact that they are capable of charging us through mere lies. The fear that we still won’t be safe even when we’re out of this facility.

I am never an ‘in between’ person. I am usually sure where I stand. But today, now that we’re almost near the end, I feel uncertain. And uncertainty bothers you in bed.

Nonetheless, we hold on.

Your visit last year has made a huge impact on how people perceive our case.

Thank you for amplifying our woes. Nothing is braver than fighting for those who are uncertain – the economically challenged, those who continue to suffer from discrimination, or people like us who are locked behind bars.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

The Australian government denies responsibility for asylum seekers detained in Nauru, following two decisions from the UN Human Rights Committee.

The UNHRC recently published its decisions on two cases involving refugees who complained about their treatment at Nauru’s regional processing facility.

The committee stated that Australia remained responsible for the health and welfare of refugees and asylum seekers detained in Nauru.

• READ MORE: Other asylum seeker reports

“A state party cannot escape its human rights responsibility when outsourcing asylum processing to another state,” committee member Mahjoub El Haiba said.

After the decisions were released, a spokesperson for the Australian Home Affairs Department said “it has been the Australian government’s consistent position that Australia does not exercise effective control over regional processing centres”.

“Transferees who are outside of Australia’s territory or its effective control do not engage Australia’s international obligations.

“Nauru as a sovereign state continues to exercise jurisdiction over the regional processing arrangements (and individuals subject to those arrangements) within their territory, to be managed and administered in accordance with their domestic law and international human rights obligations.”

Australia rejected allegations
Canberra opposed the allegations put to the committee, saying there was no prima facie substantiation that the alleged violations in Nauru had occurred within Australia’s jurisdiction.

The committee disagreed.

“It was established that Australia had significant control and influence over the regional processing facility in Nauru, and thus, we consider that the asylum seekers in those cases were within the state party’s jurisdiction under the ICCPR (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights),” El Haiba said.

“Offshore detention facilities are not human-rights free zones for the state party, which remains bound by the provisions of the Covenant.”

Refugee Action Coalition spokesperson Ian Rintoul said this was one of many decisions from the committee that Australia had ignored, and the UN committee lacked the authority to enforce its findings.

Detainees from both cases claimed Australia had violated its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), particularly Article 9 regarding arbitrary detention.

The first case involved 24 unaccompanied minors intercepted at sea, who were detained on Christmas Island before being sent to Nauru in 2014.

High temperatures and humidity
On Nauru they faced high temperatures and humidity, a lack of water and sanitation and inadequate healthcare.

Despite all but one being granted refugee status that year, they remained detained on the island.

In the second case an Iranian asylum seeker and her extended family arrived by boat on Christmas Island without valid visas.

Although she was recognised as a refugee by the authorities in Nauru in 2017 she was transferred to mainland Australia for medical reasons but remains detained.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Janine Jackson interviewed the ACLU’s Jamil Dakwar about human rights and the United States for the November 10, 2023,  episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Janine Jackson: As US officials and pundits appear to consider which babies are really civilians and which interpretation of law allows for their murder, you can almost imagine them thinking that the world is watching, waiting to learn: What do these smart people think about geopolitics? What will they decide?”

When certainly, what a huge number of people are thinking, around the world and in this country, is: Where do they get off? What allows so many US professional talking–type people, in 2023, to imagine that they are the city on the hill?

The belief in US exceptionalism—the idea that this country alone can and should serve as international arbiter, not because of a massive military and a readiness to use it, but because of the impenetrable moral high ground earned by a commitment to democratic principles—well, that belief is price of admission to the “serious people” foreign policy conversations in the US press.

ACLU

So something like the recent report from the UN Human Rights Committee, that assesses the US the same way it would assess any other country on human rights issues, lands in corporate US news media like a message from Mars.

Joining us now with a differing context is Jamil Dakwar, director of the Human Rights Program at the ACLU. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Jamil Dakwar.

Jamil Dakwar: Thank you for having me on.

JJ: This assessment from the UN Human Rights Committee can be read as particularly meaningful at the moment, as the United States asserts, both openly and covertly, its power in the Middle East. But the report is about

many things, both international and here in the United States. I know that people are not going to see a lot—if any—of media coverage on this report. So what is the report, and then what’s in it that we should acknowledge?

JD: The report that was released last Friday, November 3, is the result or outcome of a review that happened last month, on the 17 and 18 of October, by the UN Human Rights Committee. This is a committee of independent experts, of about 18 members, that come from different parts of the world, and they are in charge of monitoring the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

This treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights—or the ICCPR, as it’s commonly referred to—was one of the first international human rights treaties that the United States ratified in the early 1990s, right after the end of the Cold War, when the United States was showing that, look, we are, as you said, we are the city on the hill. We are the beacon of freedom of democracy and human rights for all other countries, and we are going to be committed to these things by signing on and ratifying this treaty.

The ratification of the ICCPR, 12/11/1978. UN Audiovisual Library of International Law.

However, that was 30 years ago, and we have this report, which was issued by the independent experts of the UN Human Rights Committee, based on reviewing the United States Periodic Report that was submitted in 2021, that essentially concluded that the US has so much more work to do. It has fallen behind, and it’s actually an outlier in many areas when it comes to civil and political rights, and particularly with regard to marginalized communities.

This is a really damning report. This is a report that—a review happens every eight or nine years. The last time this happened was in 2014, during the Obama administration. The United States’ report itself, to the committee, was submitted in the last five days of the Trump administration, and the Biden administration showed up before the committee.

Although they attempted to show some of the work and some of the important steps that they took in order to address some of the backsliding on human rights that happened in the last eight years, the committee was not convinced. And in specific terms, it went one by one, and in the report, which I hope you can post it also on your website, is a very long document that covers a massive amount of issues, from Indigenous rights to reproductive rights, to voting rights, to issues related to free speech and assembly rights, use of force. The criminal legal system was also analyzed in the report, looking at specific extreme sentences and punishment, like death by incarceration, for example, and many, many other issues that, really, it’s hard to enumerate in just a short interview.

But the bottom line is, this was another wake-up call for the United States, that you really cannot claim the moral high ground. You cannot preach to other countries on human rights when you are not doing enough here at home in your own backyard.

And I think civil society organizations that participated in the review—and we had over 140 of them from the United States, all the way from the colonial territories of Guam to Puerto Rico, to Alaska, Hawaii, to different parts of the United States—and the civil society organizations have made it clear that they are not going to accept the same talking points or the same formulations that government officials from the State Department, from the White House, from the Justice Department have put forward to the committee.

They are inadequate. More needs to be done. And that’s something that I think was echoed by the recommendations that were made in the report of the Human Rights Committee.

JJ: I do think that a lot of folks will actually find it jarring to hear the term “human rights” applied in a US domestic context. Human rights is something that other countries have violations of, and the idea of looking at missing and murdered Indigenous girls, at the death penalty, at asylum policy, at solitary confinement, looking at those as human rights issues, I think is just difficult for many people.

And I don’t want it to get lost; there is a call to action. There are calls to action suggested by the report. So what are they saying should actually happen right now?

JD: First, the committee said, we are not happy and we’re not satisfied with the way that the United States has been implementing—or rather, failing to implement—the treaty at the state, local and federal level. So they first expressed that concern, and they also said that we don’t accept the reservations that the United States has entered when the US ratified it.

But more importantly, they said the United States doesn’t have a human rights infrastructure to implement international human rights obligations. And they called, as a matter of a priority, to establish a national human rights institution—which many countries around the world, including the closest US Western allies, have—where this body would be in charge of implementing and monitoring and helping the United States uphold its international human rights obligations and commitments at the federal, state and local level.

We don’t have such a body. In fact, we don’t have any monitoring body which relates to human rights, and therefore this was one of the first and, I think, a prominent recommendation that is in the report.

The committee also made significant detailed recommendations, going through the list from, as you said, Indigenous rights issues related to sacred sites and tribal lands, or land where there was not adequate consultations with Indigenous communities—and asked them to uphold the principle of free prior and informed consent, which is a universal principle accepted by many countries around the world when it comes to intrusion and violating the rights of Indigenous peoples, particularly in the extraction and development industry.

The other area that was very prominent was in the area of gender equality and reproductive rights, where the committee also noted and called for significant changes in the way that the United States government is upholding its international human rights obligations with relation to protecting women’s right to choose and women’s right to their own body, to domestic violence, and the fact that this is an endemic that has really reached the highest proportion.

ACLU (Photo by Bryan Olin Dozier/NurPhoto via AP)

It also addressed the issue of migration and rights of immigrants, including in immigration detention facilities, the fact that many people are losing their right to seek asylum, something that we’ve seen deteriorating even under the Biden administration.

It called on the United States to look at the impact of the climate crisis on human rights in the United States, something that usually is not looked at as a matter of human rights, rather as a matter of environmental rights, or only as a matter of a climate crisis separate from human rights.

It also called on the US to address voting rights as a really urgent issue, where we know, and the committee noted, the gerrymandering and redistricting that was happening around the country, the suppression of voter rights, particularly of minority and marginalized communities.

So all of those are in the report. They are calling on the United States within three years to submit a progress report on what [steps] will be taken in order to address issues of immigration, reproductive rights and voting rights. And then, in eight years, the US will be up for another review.

Of course, the US shouldn’t be waiting for eight years to start working on its own record. I think that’s where our role as civil society organizations, to hold our government accountable, to make sure that they are doing what they should do, what they should have done yesterday or years ago and in an urgent manner.

Jamil Dakwar: “There is an organized, orchestrated attack to delegitimize the human rights movement in different ways… The lack of concerted effort to do human rights education in the United States is clear.” (image: Witness to Guantanamo)

Because it’s really impacted not only people in the United States. Some of the policies impact millions of people who reside outside the United States, particularly with regard to US massive surveillance policies. The impact of the United States’ policies of foreign assistance, as we know, impacts the rights of people who live outside the United States, including people who are still held at places like Guantánamo Bay, where the committee expressed deep concern that the Guantánamo Bay detention facility is still open and the kangaroo courts of military commissions are still hearing accusations and capital charges against some of the individuals held there.

So the call for action is clear. I think now it’s up to the US government at all levels to take that seriously, and I think for us as civil society organizations and the media to hold the government accountable as to the progress that should be made in the next few years, in terms of where the US will find itself. Is it going to really live up to this self-defined title of a global leader on human rights and champion of universal human rights? Or it’s going to continue to be only talk, and no action that will follow.

JJ: I just did want to add, finally, that just because corporate news media deal in crudeness doesn’t mean that people aren’t capable of holding ambiguity, of both seeing that their government has undeserved power and also caring about the way that that power is deployed.

And I guess one of the things I’m maddest about is the way that corporate media conflate what they call “US interests” with those of the American people. And I know that people are deeper than that, are smarter than that. And so media are not just underserving us, but erasing many of us, and the complexity and the depth of understanding that we’re capable of having when it comes to the US role in the world.

JD: Absolutely. I think that is an important distinction to be made. And I think that based on polling, most people in the United States understand the importance of human rights, actually understand also the importance of the role of international human rights bodies, including the bodies like the UN Human Rights Committee and the role of the United Nations.

And yet there is an organized, orchestrated attack to delegitimize the human rights movement in different ways. The lack of any concerted effort to do human rights education in the United States is clear, and there’s the whole movement to do censorship in the classroom, to block the ability of students to learn about history such as slavery or genocide of Indigenous peoples, or about the rights of the LGBTQ community, and so on.

Human Rights Watch

So there’s a serious organized, ideologically driven movement against any progress that this country has made over the years, and I think that there is a responsibility for all people in this country to take that seriously, meaning to push back against those efforts.

And I think the UN human rights bodies really can do much in order to really flag the concerns and the urgency and the disparities and the gaps between international human rights norms and standards and US policies and practices. And it’s really up to the people to organize and to do what they need to do in order to hold their government officials accountable.

And there is some work happening at the state and local level. When we were in Geneva last month, we had the head of the Missouri Human Rights Commission, Alisa Warren, who is also the president of IAOHRA, the International Association of Official Human Rights Agencies, that is coordinating the work of state and local human rights commissions. These agencies told the US government, “You should support us, you should provide incentives and guide us and help us do this work on the state and local level.”

And so there’s so much energy, there’s so much out there that needs to be done, and I think there’s only a hope that there should be the right political capital spent on this, rather than spent on other issues, or distorting the ideals of human rights and the notion that these really start at the very local community level.

And if we don’t do that now, it will be too late, because this is going to impact the way our future generation of people living in this country will be having a much worse situation, in terms of their ability to enjoy all of their human rights, not just civil and political rights, as this particular treaty was on, but also social, economic, cultural rights, which are the other part where the United States is falling behind in recognizing and respecting as a matter of constitutional framework, as a matter of law, as a matter of  decent treatment of all human beings.

JJ: Thank you very much. We’ve been speaking with Jamil Dakwar. He’s director of the Human Rights Program at the ACLU. Thank you again, Jamil Dakwar, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

JD: Thank you for this opportunity.

The post ‘You Cannot Preach on Human Rights When You Are Not Doing Enough at Home’ appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.

Despite its poor human rights record, Vietnam was still elected to the UNHRC by 145 out of 189 countries in a UN General Assembly meeting on October 11.

Human rights and democracy activists in Vietnam say the current perception of human rights by the Vietnamese State is very different from that of developed democracies.

“The important thing to do is to change the thinking and views of the Vietnamese authorities on human rights issues,” an activist in Hanoi told RFA, speaking on condition of anonymity for safety reasons.

“They must see human rights as the key to resolving conflicts in society, tolerating each other, eliminating hatred and developing the country.”

Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bui Than Son, told the Bao Quoc Te newspaper that Vietnam "will work with member countries to promote initiatives and solutions in areas such as the right to live in peace, development rights, rights of vulnerable groups, gender equality, access to health, education, employment, response to climate change, epidemics, etcetera.”

However, according to some international human rights organizations, “the right to development” and the “right to peace” promoted by the Hanoi government are ambiguous and are placed above universal human rights.

Fairly enforced laws that uphold the Constitution

Another activist in Hanoi, using the pseudonym Trieu Anh, said Vietnam needs to respect its own laws and enforce them aggressively, as part of measures to improve the country's human rights record.

“For improvement, it is necessary to create a legal framework, in other words simply to respect the Vietnamese Constitution so that people can exercise their rights to freedom of speech in accordance with the current Constitutional framework.”

At the end of March this year, Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) released a report which rejected 50 recommendations out of a total of nearly 300 that countries made during the UN’s Universal Periodic Review hearing on countries’ human rights record.

Notably, there was a recommendation from the Czech government, asking Vietnam to create conditions for pluralism, multi-party democracy and ensure democratic elections. It was rejected by MOFA on the grounds that it was "not suitable for the political policies, laws and practical conditions" in Vietnam.

Free prisoners of conscience

When asked what the government must do to fulfill its responsibilities to the UNHRC Nguyen Phu Hai, a retired army colonel, told RFA the Communist Party should free prisoners of conscience and amend or remove vague provisions in the Criminal Code used to suppress dissent.

Trieu Anh said the government needs to be able to absorb people's criticisms.

“Vietnam needs to immediately stop persecuting those who exercise the right to freedom of expression online and in real life,” he said, adding that the authorities should allow press freedom and the free movement of human rights campaigners.

“Activists should not be banned from leaving the country when they want to go abroad to study or attend events,” Anh said.

When responding to reports by international human rights organizations or foreign governments, Vietnam often says the country does not have prisoners of conscience and authorities only imprison individuals who violate the law. 

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Vietnamese.

The United Nations Human Rights Council has adopted a resolution aimed at assisting the Marshall Islands to get justice in the aftermath of the United States nuclear testing.

“We have suffered the cancer of the nuclear legacy for far too long and we need to find a way forward to a better future for our people,” says Samuel Lanwi, deputy permanent representative of the Marshall Islands to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The Marshallese people are still struggling with the health and environmental consequences of nuclear tests, including higher cancer rates.

• READ MORE: Other reports on nuclear tests legacy in Marshall Islands

Many people displaced due to the tests are still unable to return home.

The US conducted 67 US nuclear tests from 1946-1958 and a settlement was reached in 1986 with the United States, a Compact of Free Association, which fell short of addressing the extensive environmental and health damage that resulted from the tests.

The U.S government asserts the bilateral agreement settled “all claims, past, present and future”, including nuclear compensation.

Today at #HRC51, res. L.24/Rev.1 on RMI’s nuclear legacy was adopted by consensus. 64 years after the last nuclear test, RMI will receive UN assistance in upholding the rights of the Marshallese people that still bear the scars of this dark chapter of our past. #Nuclearlegacy pic.twitter.com/u15GKcAX6l

— Marshall Islands Permanent Mission in Geneva (@RMIGeneva) October 7, 2022

The new text tabled by five Pacific Island states called on the UN rights chief to submit a report in September 2024 on the challenges to the enjoyment of human rights by the Marshallese people, stemming from the nuclear legacy.

It called on the UN rights chief to submit a report in September 2024 on the challenges to the enjoyment of human rights by the Marshallese people stemming from the nuclear legacy.

The US as well as other nuclear weapons states such as Britain, India and Pakistan expressed concern about some aspects of the text but did not ask for a vote on the motion.

Japan did not speak at the meeting.

Observers say some nuclear states fear the initiative for the Marshall Islands could open the door to other countries bringing similar issues to the rights body.

A concrete dome on Runit Island containing radioactive waste is of concern, especially about rising sea levels as a result of climate change, according to the countries that drafted the resolution.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. Reporting also by Kyodo News/Pacnews.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The United Nations Human Rights Council has adopted a resolution aimed at assisting the Marshall Islands to get justice in the aftermath of the United States nuclear testing.

“We have suffered the cancer of the nuclear legacy for far too long and we need to find a way forward to a better future for our people,” says Samuel Lanwi, deputy permanent representative of the Marshall Islands to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The Marshallese people are still struggling with the health and environmental consequences of nuclear tests, including higher cancer rates.

• READ MORE: Other reports on nuclear tests legacy in Marshall Islands

Many people displaced due to the tests are still unable to return home.

The US conducted 67 US nuclear tests from 1946-1958 and a settlement was reached in 1986 with the United States, a Compact of Free Association, which fell short of addressing the extensive environmental and health damage that resulted from the tests.

The U.S government asserts the bilateral agreement settled “all claims, past, present and future”, including nuclear compensation.

Today at #HRC51, res. L.24/Rev.1 on RMI’s nuclear legacy was adopted by consensus. 64 years after the last nuclear test, RMI will receive UN assistance in upholding the rights of the Marshallese people that still bear the scars of this dark chapter of our past. #Nuclearlegacy pic.twitter.com/u15GKcAX6l

— Marshall Islands Permanent Mission in Geneva (@RMIGeneva) October 7, 2022

The new text tabled by five Pacific Island states called on the UN rights chief to submit a report in September 2024 on the challenges to the enjoyment of human rights by the Marshallese people, stemming from the nuclear legacy.

It called on the UN rights chief to submit a report in September 2024 on the challenges to the enjoyment of human rights by the Marshallese people stemming from the nuclear legacy.

The US as well as other nuclear weapons states such as Britain, India and Pakistan expressed concern about some aspects of the text but did not ask for a vote on the motion.

Japan did not speak at the meeting.

Observers say some nuclear states fear the initiative for the Marshall Islands could open the door to other countries bringing similar issues to the rights body.

A concrete dome on Runit Island containing radioactive waste is of concern, especially about rising sea levels as a result of climate change, according to the countries that drafted the resolution.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. Reporting also by Kyodo News/Pacnews.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.