Tag: slavery

Recognition grows for Yazidi genocide

YazidisThe Swiss parliament officially recognized the atrocities committed by the Islamic State (ISIS) against Iraq's Yazidi community as constituting genocide. The motion condemns the systematic expulsion, rape and murder of Yazidis, and the destruction of their cultural sites. The majority of the Swiss National Council voted in favor of the bill, with 105 lawmakers supporting recognition of the genocide and 61 opposing it. The parliament's statement emphasized the need for reparations and justice for survivors. Switzerland joins several other countries and bodies, including the European Parliament and a UN Commission of Inquiry, in recognizing the ISIS crimes against Yazidis as genocide. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Court dismisses child labor case against Big Tech

DRC mineThe US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia dismissed a child labor case against technology companies and refused to hold them accountable for complicity in the use of children in cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Former cobalt miners and their representatives filed a lawsuit against Alphabet (Google), Apple, Dell Technologies, Tesla and Microsoft under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA). The TVPRA penalizes anyone who "knowingly benefits financially from participating in a venture that engaged in trafficking crimes." They claimed that the companies were involved in a "venture" with their suppliers that engaged in forced labor of children to obtain the metal. The court rejected these claims and dismissed the lawsuit, upholding a lower court's decision. (Photo via Africa Up Close)

UN: poverty, oppression at root of Ecuador crisis

EcuadorUN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty & Human Rights Olivier De Schutter issued a report citing impoverishment and exploitation as the "root cause" of the fast-mounting violence and instability in Ecuador. Criminal groups exploit the desperate while gang wars deepen desperation, in a "vicious cycle linking insecurity and poverty." Following a 12-day visit to the country, De Schutter warned against a purely militarized response to the crisis that ignores social and economic factors. (Image: Nicolas Raymond via Flickr)

Harsh abuses in Eritrea ‘national service’ program

EritreaA report from a UN independent investigator is putting a fresh spotlight on allegations of torture, sexual violence, forced labor, and abusive conditions in Eritrea's system of compulsory, indefinite national service. The investigator noted that Eritrea has ignored repeated calls to ensure legal limits for national service. Since winning independence from Ethiopia three decades ago, Eritrea has been led by President Isaias Afwerki, who has never held an election. (Map: PCL)

Probe corporate profit from Uyghur forced labor

China prisonCanada's Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise has launched an inquiry into accusations over use of Uyghur forced labor in the People's Republic of China by Western corporations Nike and Dynasty Gold. While the initial evaluation stipulates that Nike has not engaged in the direct use of such labor, the company's association with Chinese third-party entities does not absolve it of accountability. Vancouver-based Dynasty Gold faces allegations of directly employing coerced labor of Uyghurs at a mining site in China. The initial evaluation finds that the company's denial of operational control over the mine at Hatu, Xinjiang region, "should not be taken at its face value," as Dynasty still possess a controlling interest in the operation. (Photo via Bitter Winter)

UN panel: prosecute South Sudan officers

South SudanA panel of UN rights experts named senior officials and military leaders in South Sudan who they say warrant criminal prosecution for their part in grave atrocities against civilians. A year-long investigation by the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan details the involvement of both government and rebel leaders in widespread murder, rape, and sexual slavery. Both military officers and a state governor are identified in the report in relation to state-sanctioned killings and other abuses. (Map: Wikipedia)

Libya: ‘crimes against humanity’ —and European complicity

LibyaThe UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Libya released a report finding grounds to believe Libyan authorities and armed groups have been responsible for "a wide array" of war crimes and crimes against humanity in recent years. The report further charged that European Union states have been complicit in crimes against humanity by Libyan forces targeting migrants trying to reach Europe. Legally barred from deporting migrants to Libya, EU governments instead give funding and technical aid to the Libyan Coast Guard, which has been accused of widespread "arbitrary detention, murder, torture, rape, enslavement and enforced disappearance" against migrants since 2016. (Map: Perry-Castañeda Library)

Podcast: state capitalism and the Uyghur genocide

UyghursIn Episode 149 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes that the UN Human Rights Office determination that China may be guilty of "crimes against humanity" in its mass detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang province is dismissed by the tankie-left ANSWER Coalition as "propagandistic." Meanwhile, it falls to Radio Free Asia, media arm of the US State Department, to aggressively cover the very real conditions of forced labor faced by the Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples of Xinjiang—and how Western corporations benefit from it. While the Western pseudo-left betrays the Uyghurs, US imperialism exploits their suffering for propaganda against a rising China in the Great Game for the Asia-Pacific region. Figures such as Australia's Kevin Rudd incorrectly portray a "Return of Red China," blaming the PRC's increasingly totalitarian direction on a supposed neo-Marxism. Fortunately, the new anthology Xinjiang Year Zero offers a corrective perspective, placing the industrial-detention complex and techno-security state in the context of global capitalism and settler colonialism. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: Xinjiang Judicial Administration via The Diplomat)

Central Asia
China prison

UN report confirms forced labor in Xinjiang, Tibet

DialloRegional NGO alliance the People's Coalition for the Sahel is demanding the immediate return alive of human rights defender Daouda Diallo, secretary general of Burkina Faso's Collective Against Impunity & Stigmatization of Communities (CISC). The CISC announced that Diallo was abducted on a Ouagadougo street by at least four unidentified men in civilian clothes. Diallo's CISC has been riasing the alarm about ethnically targeted killings in Burkina Faso under the military regimes that have been in power since a January 2022 coup. It is believed Diallo may have been "requisitioned" by the armed forces to participate in the very counterinsurgency campaign that his group has been protesting. (Image: CISC via OHCR)

Iraq
Rojava

Podcast: Rojava and Ezidikhan in the Great Game

MaliMalian armed forces and associated foreign soldiers are believed to have summarily executed an estimated 300 civilian men in a town they occupied in late March, Human Rights Watch says in a new report, calling it "worst single atrocity reported in Mali’s decade-long armed conflict." The men were detained at a marketplace in the central town of Moura, Mopti region, during a military raid. Army troops and foreign soldiers—identified by several sources as Russians—are said by witnesses and survivors to have broken the detainees up into small groups and marched them to an area outside town before putting them to death. The Malian regime is battling an insurgency by jihadist militants lined to ISIS and al-Qaeda with the help of private military contractors from Russia's Wagner Group. (Map: PCL)