New UK police powers took effect on Thursday that allow trained officers to stop, question, and, where necessary, detain and search individuals traveling through UK ports to determine involvement in hostile state activity. The powers were introduced in Schedule 3 of the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019. Hitherto, a police officer had to have reasonable [...]
A Mexican judge has issued arrest warrants for 19 former federal law enforcement officials for money laundering and organized crime, officials said Tuesday. The Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection initiated the case against these officials who worked under the Peña Nieto administration. Jesús Orta Martínez, former Secretary of Citizen Security, is among the suspects. [...]
COVID-19 is making it more difficult for Colombia’s indigenous Wayuu people to survive, according to a report released Thursday by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health. The Wayuu are an indigenous group that lives in La Guajira, a state in northeastern Colombia. In La Guajira, there is a high [...]
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet on Wednesday condemned the Belarusian government’s violent reaction to peaceful protesters following Sunday’s presidential election. Protests erupted in Belarus following the announcement of contested preliminary election results on Sunday. Over three nights of protests, police arrested more than 6,000 people. Police reportedly used rubber bullets and water [...]
The US State Department did not evaluate risks of civilian casualties and implement measures to reduce them when it approved $8.1 billion arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in May 2019, according to an Office of Inspector General (OIG) report released Tuesday. The unredacted version obtained by Politico raises doubts over Secretary of State [...]
An Algerian court on Monday sentenced journalist Khaled Drareni to three years in prison for speaking out against the government. Drareni, who is well known in Algeria and has a twitter account of roughly 150,000 followers, reported on the Hirak protest movement, where Algerians are speaking out against the rule of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and [...]
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said Monday that the draft legislation introduced by parliamentarians in Somalia must not be enacted as it violates international human rights norms, including legitimizing child marriage. “This new draft legislation would represent a serious step backward for the rights of victims of sexual violence in Somalia, in [...]
Mexico’s Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero announced Tuesday that prosecutors were opening a corruption investigation against former president Enrique Peña Nieto, who was in office from 2012 to 2018. This announcement follows accusations made against Peña Nieto by the former head of the oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex). Emilio Lozoya, the former head of Pemex, [...]
Britain’s Court of Appeals held Tuesday that the South Wales Police Force’s use of facial recognition technology violates human rights and data protection laws. The South Wales Police Force (SWP) uses automated facial recognition technology (AFR) to determine whether two facial images show the same person. AFR Locate automatically takes faces from live camera feed [...]
In a press briefing on Monday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijan announced sanctions on 11 US citizens. This decision comes in response to the sanctions imposed by the US on Hong Kong and Chinese officials accused of curtailing political freedoms in Hong Kong. On Friday the US imposed sanctions on 11 Hong Kong and [...]
