Category: Human Rights

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Human Rights Day 10th December

Today is the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document which recognises humanity’s common interests and belongs to us all.

The Declaration represents a contract between governments and their peoples, who have a right to demand that this document be respected. Not all governments have become parties to all human rights treaties. All countries, however, have accepted the UDHR.

….

As the Declaration’s custodians and beneficiaries, all of us must reclaim the UDHR, make it our own. While we are entitled to our human rights, we should also respect the human rights of others and help make universal human rights a reality for all of us. In our efforts lies the power of the UHDR: it is a living document that will continue to inspire generations to come.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights PetitionOne way you can show your support for the UDHR and spread awareness of human rights around the globe is to sign the petition to print the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in your passport .

Australians might contemplate in particular Article 14, so cruelly ignored by the xenophobic and human rights abusing Howard government.

1. Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
2. This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Howard's ShameSadly, the right to seek asylum takes second place to border protection in the minds of many brainwashed Australians.

The sixth ‘people-smuggling’ vessel to reach Australian waters since September arrived on December 8.

Its 44 passengers brings the number of suspected asylum seekers arriving by boat over the past 10 weeks to nearly 120.

This is a VERY VERY SMALL number of people compared to the legal migrant intake instituted by the Rudd government this year.

The overall migration program will now be 190,300 for this year, and 133,500 of those places will be allocated to permanent skilled migrants.

Wrongful detention of legitimate asylum seekers committed by Howard’s cold-eyed goons is coming back to haunt us.

Immigration Department may be forced to compensate 191 of the 247 people investigated by the Ombudsman for wrongful detention.

The department has so far offered compensation in 40 of the cases and settlements have been reached in 17. In total, about $1.2million in compensation has been paid so far.

If Australia wishes to minimise people-smuggling within the character of the UDHR to which it is signatory, it needs to address human rights issues in asylum seekers’ countries of origin.

Increased border protection to prevent the entry of desperate asylum seekers fleeing human rights abuses is an ineffective bandaid solution, and as has been amply demonstrated during the Howard years with the Tampa and SievX affairs, can lead to shameful Australian human rights abuse with consequent blowback later on, including diminishment of Australia’s international stature and authority to speak out about human rights abuse elsewhere.

Article 19 of the UDHR is today’s recommended reading for Stephen Conroy and supporters of his web censorwall.

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

On December 13, protests against Conroy’s proposed web filters will be held around Australia.

UPDATE

Father Frank Brennan is to head a Human Rights Consultative Panel to consider a wide range of human rights issues, including whether Australia should have a bill of rights. Brennan is a self-professed fence-sitter on whether we Australians would benefit from our individual rights being enshrined in a Bill or Charter of Rights.

Australia is the only democratic country in the world without formal human rights protections – join the Getup campaign to change this.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the democratic elected leader of Burma and Nobel Peace Price recipient, speaks about printing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in passports.

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In no uncertain terms

What will be the repercussions from today’s revelations from the internationally respected Red Cross that

Israel is using its rights as an occupying power under international law “in order to further its own interests or those of its own population to the detriment of the population of the occupied territory”.
With the the separation barrier, the establishment of an outer ring of Jewish settlements beyond the expanded municipal boundaries, and the creation of a dense road network linking Israeli neighbourhoods and settlements in and outside Jerusalem, the report says, Israel is “reshaping the development of the Jerusalem metropolitan area” with “far-reaching humanitarian consequences”.

Given the stranglehold the Zionists have on western governments, media and public opinion, and although there are signs that the support Israhell has enjoyed for its reprehensible activities are waning, probably very little.

As usual, Israhelli officials obsfucate, deny culpability, refuse to admit the validity of international law in regard to return of territories seized via warfare, and thumb their noses at warranted criticism.

Israeli officials rejected the premise that Jerusalem was an occupied territory. “It is not. Israel annexed Jerusalem in 1967 and offered full citizenship at the time to all of Jerusalem’s residents. These are facts that cannot be ignored,” a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Mark Regev said.

Israel was “committed to a diverse and pluralistic Jerusalem, to improving the conditions of all the city’s inhabitants and to protecting their interests as part of our sovereign responsibility”. He added: “If any population in Jerusalem is thriving and growing, it is the Arab population.”

Demographic facts on the ground in Jerusalem are likely to inpinge on Zionist control soon. There are also positive signs that even United Stupids dignatories are disapproving of Israhell’s past crimes in the area.

Ambassadors from European Union states are to boycott celebrations of the 40th anniversary of Israel’s conquest of Arab East Jerusalem this week – in the opening shot of what promises to be a challenging summer for Israeli diplomacy.

The United States ambassador, Richard Jones, is also expected to join the Europeans in snubbing the celebrations .

What Israelis commemorate as the “reunification” of their historic Jewish capital is seen by most of the international community, not to mention the Palestinians, as a unilateral attempt to pre-empt a key issue in any peaceful solution. One-third of the city’s 725,000 residents are Palestinians, who have opted to reject offers of Israeli citizenship. Along with most other countries, the Europeans keep their embassies in Tel Aviv.

Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestinian parliament, yesterday welcomed the European boycott as a blow for international law and peace. “The Israelis,” she said, “cannot get away with creating facts on the ground and then forcing everybody to fall in line”.

[Thanks to Antony Lowenstein for the above two links.]

There can be no doubt that Israhell is willing to continue to run the gauntlet in order to cling to lands it has misappropriated, that further oppression in order to accomplish this is still the primary modus operandus of the Zionist apartheid state. Such intransigence, of course, will not bring about conditions to promote a peaceful outcome for the region. Peace would mean compromises. On past performances, Israhell is unlikely to give an inch – to do so might initiate a collapse of its whole unsavoury, colonialist edifice.

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Ratty and Doodoo’s People Swap Club

People Poker

The ties and lies that bind between Asstralia and the United Stupids have been strengthened again with the launch of a brand new rodential caper – people trafficking.

Harnessing the blood-curdling imagination of Andrew Metcalfe, Immigration Department Secretary, the odiferous rodent has driven a hard bargain with accomplice Doodoo. Whorestralia will rid itself of those embarrassing unwanted Sri Lankan and Burmese cue-jumping boaties holidaying at taxpayers’ expense in the lovely detention resort in Nauru, where the locals are sick and tired of their already plundered country being treated as a human rubbish dump, in exchange for the United Stupids’ excess human baggage – Cuban and Haitian refugees.

This sordid deal works out splendidly for both imperialistic scoundrels, as it plays well electorally to the paranoid barbarian hordes in both their beknighted kingdoms. For Whorestralian xenophobes, Cubans and Haitians would seem almost American, especially if they are a sacred gift from King Doodoo himself. And, hallelujah brother, they are not Asians and therefore probably not dreaded Muffy followers. In fact, if not voodoo adherents, they’re most likely Catholic.

Did anyone bother asking any of these desperate people where they would rather live before they were traded like stamps?

Whilst Asstralian refugee rejects may not mind ending their arduous voyage and imprisonment with a free ticket to the United Stupids, and existing illicit people smugglers rejoice at a chance of increased demand and profits, it is dubious whether Cubans and Haitians would wish to travel to the other side of the globe to settle, with minimal future contact with relatives and friends. This raises the possibility that Doodoo’s gangsters are anticipating a lovely rampage in Cuba after Castro’s death, resulting in many Cubans fleeing the country for the United Stupids. Is Whorestralia being lined up to be a convenient human dumping ground for the human consequences of future US excesses in their interminable, tyrannical pursuit of unfettered mercantilism, grotesquely disguised as usual as those lofty tenets, freedom and democracy?

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Impervious to 650,000 Iraqi deaths

Three Monkeys of the Apocalypse

As reported at Now Public, the United Stupids have denied a visa to one of the recent Lancet Iraqi death study researchers, Dr. Riyadh Lafta, who will instead present his talk in Canada.

An Iraqi medical school professor will talk about the death count in Iraq after the 2003 invasion: causes, types of victims, categories of violence, and other health indicators.

Dr. Riyadh Lafta will be in North America to collaborate with University of Washington colleagues on a research project to document elevated levels of pediatric cancers in Basra, Iraq. The project was conceived as part of a sister university relationship between Basra Univ and the UW. The research project is supported by a grant from the Puget Sound Partners, a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation initiative.

Dr. Riyadh Lafta, who teaches medicine at Baghdad’s Al-Mustansiriya University College of Medicine, co-authored the October 2006 Lancet article that estimated more than 650,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the the American-led invasion in 2003.

Lafta will speak at a public gathering at Simon Fraser University’s Wosk Centre (580 W Hastings in downtown Vancouver BC) on Friday, April 20, at 7 pm.

His talk will be video cast to the UW’s Kane Hall at the same time with the opportunity for interactive audience participation.

Dr. Lafta will be a guest of Simon Fraser University, in part because the U.S. State Department would not issue him a visa to come to the United States.

The public is welcome at either location.

For more information:
Tim Takaro, MD, MPH, Simon Fraser Faculty of Health Sciences
ttakaro at sfu dot ca
604-268-7186

Amy Hagopian, PhD, UW School of Public Health
hagopian at u dot washington dot edu
206-616-4989, 685-3676 or Ian Maki 206-543-6020

The ABC records the members of the Coalition of the Gobbling’s infantile reactions to the Lancet study:

GEORGE W. BUSH: I don’t consider it to be a credible report.

JOHN HOWARD: I don’t believe that Johns Hopkins research, I don’t.

Continue reading “Impervious to 650,000 Iraqi deaths”

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Shock horror – Ruddock protects free speech rights

Ruddock has stood up for the rights of Asstralians against the United Stupids! Team Rodent may be so keen to make up poll losses that they are saying something right (read electorally popular) for a change.

A plea deal condition that prevents David Hicks speaking to the media for 12 months would not be enforceable in Australia, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock says.

Mr Ruddock said Australia had no law making it a crime for Hicks to talk, and the United States would only be able to act on a plea bargain breach if Hicks came “within their reach”.

But for Australia to agree to an extradition, a charge similar to the one laid overseas must exist under Australian law, Mr Ruddock said.

“In Australia, we have a position about freedom of speech,” Mr Ruddock told ABC’s Lateline program.

“I’ll leave it to your imagination as to a way in which somebody seeking extradition in relation to a party for breaching a so-called gag order would be able to be delivered up through the judicial processes in Australia.”

Asked if the gag order meant nothing, and Hicks would be able to speak to the media, Mr Ruddock responded: “I suspect you are probably right”.

Mr Ruddock said the United States included the clause in the plea bargain and it was a matter for the United States, Hicks and his advisers.

“I don’t think it’s a matter for us to enforce,” he said.

Will the gobblement still be able to grab Hicks’ story proceeds if the US Supreme Court declares the kangaroo court under which he was “sentenced” null and void at some time in the future? At the time of his arrest, Hicks had not broken any Whorestralian laws.

Although prisoners in Oz jails can’t hold press conferences, if he was released pursuant to the above, Hicks may become a *very* rich fellow from the telling of his sorry tale sooner rather than later. Perhaps there would also be a potential for an action against the US government for unlawful imprisonment and maltreatment. Sadly, on the 2 April, despite the dissent of 3 judges, the US Supreme Court did not uphold the habeas corpus rights of two convicted defendants.

Hicks is to pursue his education during his Australian jail term. It would be deliciously ironic if he decided on a legal career.