Erika Guevara Rosas, senior director for research and campaigns at Amnesty International, said: “The hundreds of tonnes of deadly cargo on board the Holger G must not reach Israel. There is a clear risk that this colossal transportation would contribute to the commission of genocide and other crimes under international law against Palestinians.”

Amnesty emphasized states’ obligations under Common Article 1 of the Geneva Conventionsand Article 6 of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) to prevent the transfer of arms to Israeli defense companies. In particular, the group said that states have failed to comply with their obligations to “prevent trade or investment relations that assist in the maintenance of the illegal situation created by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” as outlined in the International Court of Justice advisory opinion of July 2024.

Amnesty also urged Portugal, which is a party to the ATT, to prevent the cargo from reaching Israel, emphasizing: “Under international law, states have an obligation to refuse authorization for the transit of arms to Israel and to ensure they do not facilitate the continuation of any such cargo.”

Additionally, the group warned that corporate actors have similar responsibilities under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which require them to refrain from contributing to violations of international law throughout their value chains.

Amnesty further warned that Reederei Gerdes, the German shipping company that owns the vessel, is “at serious risk” of being complicit in war crimes. Elbit Systems, however, defended the company’s conduct as supplying to “a sovereign, unsanctioned government, recognized by the international community,” and that “there is no legal basis for restricting our sales.”

It was first reported by Irish independent media outlet The Ditch that the Holger G is bound for Israel carrying 440 tonnes of mortar bomb parts, projectiles, and military-grade steel to be supplied to the Israeli military. According to an online vessel tracker, the vessel is currently en route to Egypt, having travelled through the Strait of Gibraltar.

Amnesty’s statement follows the confirmation of jurisdiction by the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court to investigate charges of war crimes in the Gaza Strip since the Hamas-led attack on Israel of October 7, 2023. Last month, Amnesty also expressed concern over Germany’s decision to lift restrictions on arms deliveries to Israel, as it conflicted with the country’s international obligations.

From JURIST, Dec. 21. Used with permission. Internal links added.

See our last reports on Elbit Systems, growng pressure for an arms embargo on Israel, and the genocide accusations.

Photo: VesselFinder

The presidential election, pitting incumbent Umaro Sissoko Embaló against his main rival Fernando Dias, took place on Nov. 23. Three days later, both Embaló and Dias declared victory before the release of official results. The military then announced that it had taken “total control” of the country in the name of a “High Military Command for the Restoration of Order,” just a day before the National Elections Commission was scheduled to release the official results.

Embaló was arrested at his presidential office ahead of the military announcement. On Nov. 27, Maj-Gen. Horta Nta Na Man was sworn in as transitional president for a one-year term after the military formally removed Embaló from his position. The ousted Embaló later arrived in Senegal, with Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko calling the military coup a “sham.”

This latest military takeover reflects a pattern of instability in Guinea-Bissau since the country gained independence from Portugal in 1974. It follows a long string of coups and coup attempts, most recently in 2023.

Guinea-Bissau also ranks first among African countries in the cocaine trade. Experts have argued that “the deep-rooted involvement of Guinea-Bissau’s political-military elite in this illicit market has been a critical factor driving Guinea-Bissau’s repeated cycles of political turmoil.” In his inaugural speech, transitional president Nta Na Man justified the military takeover as necessary to thwart a plot by “narco-traffickers” to destabilize the country.

From JURIST, Nov. 29. Used with permission.

Note: Government efforts to crack down on the narco trade are believed to have prompted previous coups d’etat in Guinea-Bissau.

See our last reports on the coups d’etat and consolidating dictatorships in West Africa.

Map: PCL

A later statement by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said: “Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a sovereign nation and close ally of the United States that is working very hard and bravely taking risks with us to broker peace, does not advance Israel or America’s goals.” Yet, she added: “However, eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal.”

Qatar hosts al-Udeid air base, headquarters for US Central Command’s regional operations and host to some 8,000 US troops.

Hamas said six people were killed in the strikes, including Abdullah Abdul Wahid (Abu Khalil), the son of the organization’s acting chief, Khalil al-Hayya. The statement said the top leadership, including the negotiations team, had survived.

The key targets in the operation were named as Khalil al-Hayya; veteran top Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, who was replaced by Ismail Haniyeh in 2017; and Zaher Jabarin, leader of the Hamas financial bureau. Their fates remain unknown at this time. (JP, ToI, LWJ, BBC News, Al Jazeera, NewsHour)

Was Hamas’ Qatar leadership responible for October 7?
Israel of course portrayed the targeted leaders as responsible for the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, as well as the previous day’s deadly militant attack in Jerusalem. However, an Arabic-language account in the London-based pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, cited by the Jerusalem Post on Jan. 10, 2024, said that only five Hamas leaders made the decision for the Oct. 7 attack—all based in Gaza, and not inlcuding any of those named as targeted in the Qatar raid.

The report, based on Palestinian sources close to the leadership of Hamas’ military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, named the decision-makers as Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza (now believed to be dead); Muhammed Deif, leader of the al-Qassam Brigades, Muhammed Sinwar (Yahya’s brother); Rouhi Mushtaha, a figure close to Sinwar; and Ayman Nofal, former head of intelligence for al-Qassam Brigades; assassinated by Israel shortly after the October 2023 attacks. The account portrays the decision to launch the attacks as a coup by Sinwar against the Qatar-exiled leadership.

Mousa Abu Marzouk, head of the Hamas foreign-relations office in Qatar, said earlier this year that if he knew what the consequences would be from the October 2023 attacks, he would have not have supported them. “If it was expected that what happened would happen, there wouldn’t have been Oct. 7,” Marzouk was quoted in the New York Times on Feb. 24, 2025. This statement does imply that he had been aware of the attacks beforehand. Two weeks after the attacks, in a seeming bid for international legitimacy, Marzouk led a Hamas delegation to Moscow, where they met with Russian deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov. (NYT, Oct. 26, 2023)

Drone terror targets flotilla in Tunis?
On the same day as the Qatar strikes, organizers of a flotilla carrying aid for Gaza said their lead ship, the Familia Madeira, was hit by a drone while anchored at the port of Sidi Bou Said in Tunisia. A video that was posted by the Global Sumud Flotilla appears to show a lit projectile falling from the sky onto the vessel before flames erupt on the front deck. The ship sustained some damage to the top deck and a storage area below, according to later footage posted on social media.

“The boat is sailing under the Portuguese flag and all six passengers and crew are safe,” the group said in a statement. “Fire damage was caused to the main deck and below deck storage. Acts of aggression aimed at intimidating and derailing our mission will not deter us. Our peaceful mission to break the siege on Gaza and stand in solidarity with its people continues with determination and resolve.”

The statement said the vessel “was struck by a drone.” Tunisia’s Interior Ministry said reports of a drone strike “have no basis in truth,” Reuters reported.

Yet just hours later, on the morning of Sept. 10, the Flotilla reported that a second vessel was struck by a drone. The group said the British-flagged Alma sustained fire damage to its top deck

United Nations Human Rights Council special rapporteur Francesca Albanese, who lives in Tunisia, (and is now facing US sanctions), said in a video after the first apparent strike: “If it’s confirmed that this is a drone attack, it will be an assault, an aggression against Tunisia and against Tunisian sovereignty. Again, we cannot keep on tolerating this and normalizing the illegal.”

The Global Sumud Flotilla’s most prominent member is Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, internationally known for her climate advocacy and now a leading figure in the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. (The Hill, Politico, The Independent, The Guardian)

Two days before the apparent strike, more than 1,000 people gathered at the Sidi Bou Said harbor to welcome the flotilla, which had just arrived from Barcelona. “We all know why we’re are here,” Thunberg told the crowd. “Just across the water there’s a genocide going on, a mass starvation by Israel’s murder machine.” (ToI)

The dramatic developments of Sept. 9 came hours after Israel’s military warned all of Gaza City’s residents to evacuate before a planned offensive to take full control of the city, where hundreds of thousands of people are living under famine conditions. (The Guardian)

Photo: FreeGaza via Wikimedia Commons

Maya Wang, associate China director at HRW, said, “The arrest…reflects the broadening repression radiating from China to Hong Kong and Macao under Chinese leader Xi Jinping.”

On July 30, former lawmaker and pro-democracy activist Au Kam San was arrested after authorities accused him of violating Article 13 of the national security law, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment and criminalizes the establishment of “links with organizations or groups” outside Macau to “conduct activities endangering national security.”

This presumably refers to Au’s work with the Macau Union of Democratic Development, which for years organized annual commemorations of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Members have repeatedly met with threats and harassment from the authorities.

The wording of the national security statute is notably ambiguous and does not provide a threshold as to what actions constitute “national security” threats, making it susceptible to abuse. Under a textualist lens, a panel of judges could theoretically find that mere criticism of the government triggers the statute. Rights experts warn that authorities may weaponize the law to silence any and all dissent.

Hong Kong and Macau enjoy a high degree of autonomy in certain administrative affairs under the “one country, two systems” framework, conceived by Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s to preserve these cities’ distinct status as former British and Portuguese colonies, respectively. However, sovereignty ultimately remains with China. As the 41st anniversary of the December 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration approaches—a treaty that outlined China’s obligations ahead of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong—the territory has experienced one of the sharpest declines in freedom of expression in the world, dropping 49 points into the “crisis category,” according to the Article 19 Global Expression Report 2025.

Similar guarantees were pledged for Macau in the 1987 Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration, setting terms for the 1999 handover. But these have also significantly eroded, with the territory’s judiciary exacerbating the anti-democratic climate. In 2021, Macao’s courts upheld a government ban on the annual Tiananmen Massacre vigil, ruling that political slogans violated the Chinese Constitution by inciting the public to “overthrow the existing political system.”

The right to freedom of expression is protected by Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights (ICCPR). China is a signatory to the ICCPR, but has yet to ratify it.

From JURIST, Aug. 7. Used with permission.

See our last posts on Macau, the Hong Kong National Security Law, the crackdown on dissent in China, and the legacy of Tiananmen Square.

Image: Macau police block annual Tiananmen vigil, June 2020. Credit: Choi Chi-chio/United Social Press via HKFP

The protest, organized by Extinction Rebellion, was part of an international campaign against fossil fuel subsidies in Europe. The “United for Climate Justice” campaign brings together 30 organizations from 15 countries. Simultaneous demonstrations also took place as part of the campaign in Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Poland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the UK.

From Jurist, Apri 6. Used with permission.

See our last reports on Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion and the European climate protests.

Photo: Extinction Rebellion

During the announcement at the Central Government Offices, Lee said that the proposed legislation seeks to safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests, while respecting and protecting human rights. Secretary for Justice Paul Lam argued that national security and human rights are inherently linked, citing the 2019 protests as having violated the rights of citizens.

The Security Bureau has released a consultation paper to gather public opinions on the matter. The paper outlines supposed risks to national security, the necessity of legislation to protect it, and the legal principles enshrined in Article 23.

This legislation would build on the National Security Law imposed by Beijing in June 2020, which criminalizes secession, subversion, foreign collusion, and terrorism.

Massive protests involving an estimated 500,000 participants halted the previous attempt to legislate Article 23 in 2003. The current push highlights the Hong Kong government’s efforts to address “soft resistance,” such as online activity that may jeopardize national security.

From Jurist, Jan. 30. Used with permission.

See our last report on the National Security Law.

Photo: HKFP

The fighting in Cabo Delgado province is fast becoming a world-scale humanitarian crisis, with 670,000 people now displaced, and a further 2,600 killed over the past year. The Shabaab have taken control of several villages and towns, including the port of Mocimboa da Praia. These seizures of territory have seen general massacres of the inhabitants. Children as young as 11 have been beheaded by the militants, aid agency Save the Children says in a new report. FADM soldiers have also committed atrocities against the civil population, Amnesty International stated in a report issued in September.

However, for foreign powers, the conflict appeared to reach a turning point at the end of December, when the Shabaab carried out attacks for the first time just a few kilometers from a multibillion-euro gas project operated by the French oil company Total. The liquefied natural gas facility at Afungi was forced to suspend operations. The insurgency erupted last year just after some of the world’s biggest oil and gas reserves were discovered in Cabo Delgado. (DefenceWeb, South Africa, Atalayar, Madrid, AfricaNews, Thomson Reuters, NYT, AP)

Photo: US Embassy in Mozambique

Their complaint comes after lethal wildfires in Portugal in 2017 killed more than 120 people. Researchers have linked the intensity of the 2017 fires to global warming. The case is also being filed after Portugal recorded its hottest July in the last 90 years.

“I am afraid for my future,” petitioner Catarina Mota, 20, told reporters during a virtual press conference from her home in Leiria, in central Portugal. “I live with the feeling that every year my home becomes a more hostile place. If I have children, what kind of world shall I bring them up in? These are real concerns that I have every day… After the 2017 fires we realized that we must change and urgently stop climate change.” (Climate Home News, DW)

A similar legal action has been launched by a group of youth in Australia, seeking an injunction to stop approval of a license extension at Whitehaven Coal‘s Vickery mine in New South Wales, arguing that it would threaten the futures of young people all over the world by exacerbating climate change. Izzy Raj-Seppings, 13, lead plaintiff in the case, filed the injunction along with seven other young people aged 13 to 17—many of whom met during the School Strike 4 Climate protests. The Sydney high school student made headlines last year when police ordered her to move on after holding a protest outside the prime minister’s Kirribilli residence. (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Australia has also repeatedly been devastated by wildfires in recent years.

Numerous lawsuits over climate change are pending from California to Peru.

Photo: GLAN

The new regularization law was initially greeted as a major step forward for migrant rights and as an example of good migration policy during the coronavirus pandemic. “From now on, the invisible will be a bit less invisible,” Italy’s minister of agriculture, Teresa Bellanova, said at a press conference announcing the law.

Supporters still say the new law is an important, if tentative, improvement. But critics argue that it amounts to little more than a temporary amnesty that ultimately puts economic interests ahead of human rights, and will do little to address the rampant exploitation of migrant labor, especially in Italy’s agricultural industry.

Italy’s fields have long attracted migrant workers from eastern Europe, hundreds of thousands of whom flock to the country to work the harvest every year. They are joined in the fields by thousands of Africans and other non-Europeans who have crossed the Mediterranean to apply for asylum or to seek better lives in the EU. Nearly 500,000 people have made the journey since 2015. Many intended to move on to northern Europe but found themselves stuck with little choice but to try to find work in Italy’s informal economy.

“[The law] is not exactly what we were hoping for because it is a very limited regularisztion. But at this point, after decades of total invisibility, anything is better than nothing. It is a starting point,” Francesco Piobbichi, a social worker with the migrant support organization Mediterranean Hope, told The New Humanitarian.

Not everyone agrees.

The Unione Sindacale di Base (USB), an Italian trade union that represents agricultural workers, called a national strike on May 21 to protest the law’s shortcomings. The union argues that the law is too limited in scope and will do little to protect exploited migrant agricultural workers. “Legal papers don’t necessarily protect you from exploitation,” said Michele Mililli, a USB representative in Sicily. “This is a structural problem that should not have been addressed during a healthcare emergency, but much earlier.”

There are an estimated 560,000 undocumented migrants in Italy. But the new law only applies to people working in agriculture or as domestic helpers, leaving out people who work in other sectors of the economy that rely heavily on undocumented labor, such as construction and food services.

To regularize their status, undocumented migrants need the support of an employer or proof they were working in one of the eligible sectors prior to October 2019. “There is no guarantee that many [employers] will do it,” Enzo Rossi, a professor of migration economics at Tor Vergata University in Rome, told TNH. “And when the six months…expire, these people will be faced with the same dilemma as before the pandemic.”

The amnesty also excludes people who were stripped of humanitarian protection or legal status by a series of anti-migrant security decrees issued in late 2018 by former far-right interior minister Matteo Salvini that Human Rights Watch said “eviscerated Italy’s asylum procedure and reception system.”

The law focuses instead on people working in sectors of the economy deemed to be “essential” during the pandemic, such as undocumented agricultural workers who account for about 25 percent of Italy’s agricultural workforce, about double the amount of other economic sectors, according to the country’s National Institute of Statistics.

Portugal’s decision in March to treat people with pending immigration applications as residents for the duration of the coronavirus crisis has been regarded as an effort to guarantee that undocumented migrants have access to healthcare and social services during the pandemic. But Italy’s regularization is seen by the USB and other trade unions and humanitarian groups as a more cynical attempt to plug its labor gap—an estimated 250,000-worker shortfall stemming from coronavirus-related travel restrictions and fears.

It’s also not the first time Italy has offered a path toward temporary regularisation for undocumented workers, mainly in agriculture. Over the past 35 years, there have been at least five amnesties, but they’ve never led to a comprehensive solution, according to Rossi.

“The systematic use of this tool has always postponed the bigger problem: a long-term legalisation solution,” Rossi said. “That’s why the numbers of undocumented workers have always been so high.”

From The New Humanitarian, May 25

The resolution, backed by the five main political groups in the European Parliament, notes that currently "there are in total more than 70 Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia and in the occupied Crimea." It also demands the release of Oyub Titiyev, the Chechnya head of Russian rights group Memorial, who has been detained since January 2018, and urges the Russian authorities to cease the intimidation and harassment of Memorial staff. (RFE/RL)

Out of 627 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), 485 voted for the resolution, 76 voted against, and 66 abstained. Tango Noir website provides a break-down of the 76 MEPs who voted against the resolution. They are invariably either of the "far right" or the "far left." In the prior category are several MEPs from the French National Front (recently renamed the Naitonal Rally), Germany's Alternative für Deutschland, the Greek Golden Dawn, Italy's Northern League (recently rebranded as simply The League), the Netherlands' Party for Freedom, and Britain's UK Independence Party. 

In the latter camp are the French Left Front, Germany's Die Linke, the Greek Syriza, Italy's The Other Europe, Portugal's Left Bloc, and Spain's Podemos. 

Another ugly and despairingly stupid exponent of Red-Brown Politics.

Do you mind explaining to us what you are thinking, Left Front, Die Linke, Syriza, The Other Europe, Left Bloc, and Podemos?

No, really. We want to know.

Photo via Kyiv Post