organization:human rights watch

UN envoy fears ’new crisis’ for Rohingya Muslims if moved to remote Bangladesh island

A United Nations human rights investigator on #Myanmar has voiced deep concern at Bangladesh’s plan to relocate 23,000 Rohingya refugees to a remote island, saying it may not be habitable and could create a “new crisis”.

▻https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-12/un-envoy-fears-new-crisis-for-rohingya-muslims/10890932
#réfugiés #îles #île #Bangladesh #rohingya #réfugiés_rohingya #asile #migrations #Birmanie

Snowden Joins Calls For Google To End Censored Chinese Search Project
▻https://www.dailydot.com/debug/snowden-google-censored-china

Mikael Thalen— Dec 11 2018 - Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has joined numerous human rights groups in condemning Google over its plan to launch a censored search engine in China.

In an open letter published Monday, Snowden and more than 60 organizations including Amnesty International, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Human Rights Watch, called on the tech giant to cease its work on the secretive “Dragonfly” project.

“Facilitating Chinese authorities’ access to personal data, as described in media reports, would be particularly reckless,” the letter states. “If such features were launched, there is a real risk that Google would directly assist the Chinese government in arresting or imprisoning people simply for expressing their views online, making the company complicit in human rights violations.”

First revealed last August by the Intercept, the search app, made in an attempt by Google to re-enter the Chinese market, would not only surveil users but blacklist results for search queries such as “student protest” and “Nobel Prize” at the behest of Beijing.

“New details leaked to the media strongly suggest that if Google launches such a product it would facilitate repressive state censorship, surveillance, and other violations affecting nearly a billion people in China,” the letter adds.

Describing the project as “reckless,” the letter also warns that deploying Dragonfly would likely “set a terrible precedent for human rights and press freedoms worldwide.”

Monday’s statement comes just weeks after more than 600 Google employees signed a similar letter demanding the company cancel Dragonfly’s development.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who was confronted about Dragonfly during testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee Monday, has repeatedly alleged that there are no plans “right now” to launch the project.

A leaked meeting transcript from July, however, revealed Google’s search chief Ben Gomes had said the company intended to launch Dragonfly somewhere between January and April of 2019.

#Chine #surveillance #Google

Europe’s deadly migration strategy. Officials knew EU military operation made Mediterranean crossing more dangerous.

https://i.imgur.com/XvoVqY5.png

Since its creation in 2015, Europe’s military operation in the Mediterranean — named “#Operation_Sophia” — has saved some 49,000 people from the sea. But that was never really the main objective.

The goal of the operation — which at its peak involved over a dozen sea and air assets from 27 EU countries, including ships, airplanes, drones and submarines — was to disrupt people-smuggling networks off the coast of Libya and, by extension, stem the tide of people crossing the sea to Europe.

European leaders have hailed the operation as a successful joint effort to address the migration crisis that rocked the bloc starting in 2015, when a spike in arrivals overwhelmed border countries like Greece and Italy and sparked a political fight over who would be responsible for the new arrivals.

But a collection of leaked documents from the European External Action Service, the bloc’s foreign policy arm, obtained by POLITICO (▻https://g8fip1kplyr33r3krz5b97d1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/OperationSophia.pdf), paint a different picture.

In internal memos, the operation’s leaders admit Sophia’s success has been limited by its own mandate — it can only operate in international waters, not in Libyan waters or on land, where smuggling networks operate — and it is underfunded, understaffed and underequipped.

“Sophia is a military operation with a very political agenda" — Barbara Spinelli, Italian MEP

The confidential reports also show the EU is aware that a number of its policies have made the sea crossing more dangerous for migrants, and that it nonetheless chose to continue to pursue those strategies. Officials acknowledge internally that some members of the Libyan coast guard that the EU funds, equips and trains are collaborating with smuggling networks.

For the operation’s critics, the EU’s willingness to turn a blind eye to these shortcomings — as well as serious human rights abuses by the Libyan coast guard and in the country’s migrant detention centers — are symptomatic of what critics call the bloc’s incoherent approach to managing migration and its desire to outsource the problem to non-EU countries.

“Sophia is a military operation with a very political agenda,” said Barbara Spinelli, an Italian MEP and member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs in the European Parliament. “It has become an instrument of refoulement, legitimizing militias with criminal records, dressed up as coast guards.”

Now the operation, which is managed by Italy and has been dogged by political disagreements since it began, is coming under increasing pressure as the deadline for its renewal approaches in March.

Italy’s deputy prime minister, far-right leader Matteo Salvini, has said the operation should only be extended if there are new provisions to resettle rescued people across the bloc. Last month, Germany announced it would be discontinuing its participation in the program, claiming that Italy’s refusal to allow rescued migrants to disembark is undermining the mission.

Named after a baby girl born on an EU rescue ship, Sophia is the uneasy compromise to resolve a deep split across the bloc: between those who pushed for proactive search-and-rescue efforts to save more lives and those who favored pulling resources from the sea to make the crossing more dangerous.

The naval operation sits uncomfortably between the two, rescuing migrants in distress at sea, but insisting its primary focus is to fight smugglers off the coast of Libya. The two activities are frequently in conflict.

The operation has cycled through a number of strategies since its launch: a campaign to destroy boats used by smugglers; law-enforcement interviews with those rescued at sea; extensive aerial surveillance; and training and funding a newly consolidated Libyan coast guard.

But the success of these approaches is highly disputed, and in some cases they have put migrants’ lives at greater risk.

The EU’s policy of destroying the wooden boats used by smugglers to avoid them being reused, for example, has indeed disrupted the Libyan smuggling business, but at a substantial human cost.

As Libyan smugglers lost their wooden boats, many started to rely more heavily on smaller, cheaper rubber boats. The boats, which smugglers often overfill to maximize profit, are not as safe as the wooden vessels and less likely to reach European shores. Instead, Libyan smugglers started to abandon migrants in international waters, leaving them to be pulled out of peril by European rescue ships.

Sophia officials tracked the situation and were aware of the increased risk to migrants as a result of the policy. “Smugglers can no longer recover smuggling vessels on the high seas, effectively rendering them a less economic option for the smuggling business and thereby hampering it,” they wrote in a 2016 status report seen by POLITICO.

The report acknowledged however that the policy has pushed migrants into using rubber boats, putting them in greater danger. “Effectively, with the limited supply and the degree of overloading, the migrant vessels are [distress] cases from the moment they launch,” it said.

These overfilled rubber boats, which officials described as shipwrecks waiting to happen, also present a problem for the EU operation.

International maritime law compels vessels to respond to people in distress at sea and bring the rescued to a nearby safe port. And because European courts have held that Libya has no safe port, that means bringing migrants found at sea to Europe — in most cases, Italy.

This has exacerbated political tensions in the country, where far-right leader Salvini has responded to the influx of new arrivals by closing ports to NGO and humanitarian ships carrying migrants and threatening to bar Sophia vessels from docking.

Meanwhile, Sophia officials have complained that rescuing people from leaking, unseaworthy boats detracted from the operation’s ability to pursue its primary target: Libyan smugglers.

In a leaked status report from 2017, Sophia officials made a highly unusual suggestion: that the operation be granted permission to suspend its rescue responsibilities in order to focus on its anti-smuggling operations.

“Consideration should be given to an option that would allow the operation to be authorized for being temporarily exempt from search and rescue when actively conducting anti-smuggling operations against jackals in international waters,” the report read.

The EU has also wilfully ignored inconvenient aspects of its policies when it comes to its collaboration with Libya’s municipal coast guard.

The intention of the strategy — launched one year into the Sophia operation — was to equip Libyan authorities to intercept migrant boats setting off from the Libyan coast and bring people back to shore. This saved Europe from sending its own ships close to coast, and meant that people could be brought back to Libya, rather than to Europe, as required by international maritime law — or more specifically, Italy.

Here too, the EU was aware it was pursuing a problematic strategy, as the Libyan coast guard has a well-documented relationship with Libyan smugglers.

A leaked report from Frontex, the EU’s coast guard, noted in 2016: “As mentioned in previous reports, some members of Libya’s local authorities are involved in smuggling activities.” The report cited interviews with recently rescued people who said they were smuggled by Libyans in uniform. It also noted that similar conclusions were reported multiple times by the Italian coast guard and Operation Sophia.

“Many of [the coast guard officers] were militia people — many of them fought with militias during the civil war" — Rabih Boualleg, Operation Sophia translator

In Sophia’s leaked status report from 2017, operation leaders noted that “migrant smuggling and human trafficking networks remain well ingrained” throughout the region and that smugglers routinely “pay off authorities” for passage to international waters.

“Many of [the coast guard officers] were militia people — many of them fought with militias during the civil war,” said Rabih Boualleg, who worked as a translator for Operation Sophia in late 2016 on board a Dutch ship involved in training the coast guard from Tripoli.

“They were telling me that many of them hadn’t gotten their government salaries in eight months. They told me, jokingly, that they were ‘forced’ to take money from smugglers sometimes.”

The coast guards talked openly about accepting money from smuggling networks in exchange for escorting rubber boats to international waters instead of turning them back toward the shore, Boualleg said.

“If the [on-duty] coast guard came,” Boualleg added, “they would just say they were fishermen following the rubber boats, that’s all.”

Frontex’s 2016 report documents similar cases. Two officials with close knowledge of Sophia’s training of the Libyan coast guard also confirmed that members of the coast guard are involved in smuggling networks. A spokesperson for the Libyan coast guard did not return repeated requests for comment.

EU governments have, for the most part, simply looked the other way.

And that’s unlikely to change, said a senior European official with close knowledge of Operation Sophia who spoke on condition of anonymity. For the first time since the start of the operation, Libyan authorities are returning more people to Libya than are arriving in Italy.

“If Italy decides — since it is the country in command of Operation Sophia — to stop it, it is up to Italy to make this decision" — Dimitris Avramopoulos, immigration commissioner

“Europe doesn’t want to upset this balance,” the official said. “Any criticism of the coast guards could lead to resentment, to relaxing.”

Two years into the training program, leaked reports also show the Libyan coast guard was unable to manage search-and-rescue activities on its own. Sophia monitors their operations with GoPro cameras and through surveillance using ships, airplanes, drones and submarines.

The operation is limited by its mandate, but it has made progress in difficult circumstances, an EEAS spokesperson said. Operation Sophia officials did not respond to multiple interview requests and declined to answer questions via email.

“The provision of training the Libyan coast guard and navy, as well as continued engagement with them have proven to be the most effecting complementary tool to disrupt the activities of those involved in trafficking,” the EEAS spokesperson said in an email.

The spokesperson maintained that Libyan coast guards who are trained by Operation Sophia undergo a “thorough vetting procedure." The spokesperson also stated that, while Operation Sophia does advise and monitor the Libyan coast guard, the operation is not involved “in the decision-making in relation to operations.”

*

With the March deadline for the operation’s renewal fast approaching, pressure is mounting to find a way to reform Sophia or disband it altogether.

When Salvini closed Italy’s ports to NGO and humanitarian ships last July, the country’s foreign minister turned to the EU to negotiate a solution that would ensure migrants rescued as part of Operation Sophia would be resettled among other countries. At the time, Italy said it expected results “within weeks.” Six months later, neither side has found a way through the impasse.

“The fate of this operation is not determined yet,” European Commissioner for Immigration Dimitris Avramopoulos told reporters last month, adding that discussions about allowing migrants to disembark in non-Italian ports are still underway among member countries.

“If Italy decides — since it is the country in command of Operation Sophia — to stop it, it is up to Italy to make this decision.”

The political fight over the future of the operation has been made more acute by an increase in criticism from human rights organizations. Reports of violence, torture and extortion in Libyan detention centers have put the naval operation and EEAS on the defensive.

A Human Rights Watch report published in January found that Europe’s support for the Libyan coast guard has contributed to cases of arbitrary detention, and that people intercepted by Libyan authorities “face inhuman and degrading conditions and the risk of torture, sexual violence, extortion, and forced labor.” Amnesty International has also condemned the conditions under which migrants are being held, and in an open letter published earlier this month, 50 major aid organizations warned that “EU leaders have allowed themselves to become complicit in the tragedy unfolding before their eyes.”

These human rights violations have been well documented. In 2016, the U.N. Human Rights Office said it considered “migrants to be at high risk of suffering serious human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, in Libya and thus urges States not to return, or facilitate the return of, persons to Libya.”

Last June, the U.N. sanctioned six men for smuggling and human rights violations, including the head of the coast guard in Zawiya, a city west of Tripoli. A number of officials under his command, a leaked EEAS report found, were trained by Operation Sophia.

An EEAS spokesperson would not comment on the case of the Zawiya coast guards trained by Operation Sophia or how the officers were vetted. The spokesperson said that none of the coast guards “trained by Operation Sophia” are on the U.N. sanctions list.

The deteriorating human rights situation has prompted a growing chorus of critics to argue the EU’s arrangement with Libya is unsustainable.

“What does the EU do in Libya? They throw money at projects, but they don’t have a very tangible operation on the ground" — Tarek Megerisi, Libyan expert

“Returning anyone to Libya is against international law,” said Salah Margani, a former justice minister in Libya’s post-civil war government. “Libya is not a safe place. They will be subject to murder. They will be subjected to torture.”

“This is documented,” Margani added. “And [Europe] knows it.”

Sophia is also indicative of a larger, ineffective European policy toward Libya, said Tarek Megerisi, a Libya specialist at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“What does the EU do in Libya? They throw money at projects, but they don’t have a very tangible operation on the ground. They really struggle to convert what they spend into political currency — Operation Sophia is all they’ve got,” he said.

The project, he added, is less a practical attempt to stop smuggling or save migrants than a political effort to paper over differences within the EU when it comes to migration policy.

With Sophia, he said, Europe is “being as vague as possible so countries like Italy and Hungary can say this is our tool for stopping migration, and countries like Germany and Sweden can say we’re saving lives.”

“With this operation, there’s something for everyone,” he said.

▻https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-deadly-migration-strategy-leaked-documents

Commentaire ECRE :

Leaked documents obtained by @POLITICOEurope show that the #EU knew its military operation “Sophia” in the Mediterranean made sea crossing more dangerous.

▻https://twitter.com/ecre/status/1101074946057482240

#responsabilité #Méditerranée #mourir_en_mer #asile #migrations #réfugiés #mer_Méditerranée #Frontex #EU #UE
#leaks #sauvetage #externalisation #frontières

–-----------------------------------------

Mise en exergue de quelques passages de l’article qui me paraissent particulièrement intéressants :

The confidential reports also show the EU is aware that a number of its policies have made the sea crossing more dangerous for migrants, and that it nonetheless chose to continue to pursue those strategies. Officials acknowledge internally that some members of the Libyan coast guard that the EU funds, equips and trains are collaborating with smuggling networks.

Named after a baby girl born on an EU rescue ship, Sophia is the uneasy compromise to resolve a deep split across the bloc: between those who pushed for proactive search-and-rescue efforts to save more lives and those who favored pulling resources from the sea to make the crossing more dangerous.
The naval operation sits uncomfortably between the two, rescuing migrants in distress at sea, but insisting its primary focus is to fight smugglers off the coast of Libya. The two activities are frequently in conflict.

The report acknowledged however that the policy has pushed migrants into using rubber boats, putting them in greater danger. “Effectively, with the limited supply and the degree of overloading, the migrant vessels are [distress] cases from the moment they launch,” it said.

In a leaked status report from 2017 (▻https://g8fip1kplyr33r3krz5b97d1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/ENFM-2017-2.pdf), Sophia officials made a highly unusual suggestion: that the operation be granted permission to suspend its rescue responsibilities in order to focus on its anti-smuggling operations.

“Consideration should be given to an option that would allow the operation to be authorized for being temporarily exempt from search and rescue when actively conducting anti-smuggling operations against jackals in international waters,” the report read.

A leaked report from #Frontex (►https://theintercept.com/2017/04/02/new-evidence-undermines-eu-report-tying-refugee-rescue-group-to-smuggl), the EU’s coast guard, noted in 2016: “As mentioned in previous reports, some members of Libya’s local authorities are involved in smuggling activities.” The report cited interviews with recently rescued people who said they were smuggled by Libyans in uniform. It also noted that similar conclusions were reported multiple times by the Italian coast guard and Operation Sophia.

In Sophia’s leaked status report from 2017, operation leaders noted that “migrant smuggling and human trafficking networks remain well ingrained” throughout the region and that smugglers routinely “pay off authorities” for passage to international waters. “Many of [the coast guard officers] were militia people — many of them fought with militias during the civil war,” said Rabih Boualleg, who worked as a translator for Operation Sophia in late 2016 on board a Dutch ship involved in training the coast guard from Tripoli. The coast guards talked openly about accepting money from smuggling networks in exchange for escorting rubber boats to international waters instead of turning them back toward the shore, Boualleg said.

Frontex’s 2016 report documents similar cases. Two officials with close knowledge of Sophia’s training of the Libyan coast guard also confirmed that members of the coast guard are involved in smuggling networks. A spokesperson for the Libyan coast guard did not return repeated requests for comment.

Two years into the training program, leaked reports (▻https://g8fip1kplyr33r3krz5b97d1-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/ENFM-Monitoring-of-Libyan-Coast-Guard-and-Navy-Report-October-2017-January-2018.pdf) also show the Libyan coast guard was unable to manage search-and-rescue activities on its own. Sophia monitors their operations with GoPro cameras and through surveillance using ships, airplanes, drones and submarines.

A Human Rights Watch report (▻https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/01/21/no-escape-hell/eu-policies-contribute-abuse-migrants-libya) published in January found that Europe’s support for the Libyan coast guard has contributed to cases of arbitrary detention, and that people intercepted by Libyan authorities “face inhuman and degrading conditions and the risk of torture, sexual violence, extortion, and forced labor.” Amnesty International has also condemned (►https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/LY/DetainedAndDehumanised_en.pdf) the conditions under which migrants are being held, and in an open letter published earlier this month, 50 major aid organizations warned that “EU leaders have allowed themselves to become complicit in the tragedy unfolding before their eyes.”

“Returning anyone to Libya is against international law,” said Salah Margani, a former justice minister in Libya’s post-civil war government. “Libya is not a safe place. They will be subject to murder. They will be subjected to torture.”

“This is documented,” Margani added. “And [Europe] knows it.”
Sophia is also indicative of a larger, ineffective European policy toward Libya, said Tarek Megerisi, a Libya specialist at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“What does the EU do in Libya? They throw money at projects, but they don’t have a very tangible operation on the ground. They really struggle to convert what they spend into political currency — Operation Sophia is all they’ve got,” he said.

With Sophia, he said, Europe is “being as vague as possible so countries like Italy and Hungary can say this is our tool for stopping migration, and countries like Germany and Sweden can say we’re saving lives.”
“With this operation, there’s something for everyone,” he said.

#flou

Les #Emirats_arabes_unis, apôtres d’une #tolérance à géométrie très variable - Le Temps
▻https://www.letemps.ch/monde/emirats-arabes-unis-apotres-dune-tolerance-geometrie-tres-variable

https://assets.letemps.ch/sites/default/files/styles/share/public/media/2019/02/05/file73y9t8vknpyq7wg7mmm.jpg.jpeg?itok=gRdONR-P

Dans le domaine politique, les dirigeants émiratis font par exemple preuve d’une #intolérance absolue pour le #pluralisme. Tous les #dissidents du pays croupissent en prison, qu’il s’agisse d’islamistes membres du parti Islah, la déclinaison émiratie du mouvement des Frères musulmans, ou de libéraux partisans de l’instauration d’une monarchie constitutionnelle. La dernière voix libre du pays, celle du défenseur des droits de l’homme Ahmed Mansour, a été bâillonnée en mai 2018 au moyen d’une condamnation à 10 ans de prison.

Les procès de la plupart de ces opposants, pour « subversion », « atteinte à l’unité nationale » ou encore « propagation de fausses nouvelles », ont été qualifiés de #parodie de #justice par Amnesty International et Human Rights Watch. Dans les #prisons émiraties, la #torture et les mauvais traitements sont fréquents, affirment ces ONG, qui dénoncent aussi de nombreux cas de disparitions forcées.

Ces pratiques ultra­-répressives, qui se sont intensifiées à partir des Printemps arabes de 2011 – perçus par les #dynasties du #Golfe comme une menace –, s’étendent parfois aux étrangers. En novembre, un jeune thésard britannique, Matthew Hedges, qui menait des recherches sur la politique sécuritaire des EAU, avait été condamné à la prison à vie pour espionnage, avant d’être gracié, quelques jours plus tard, sous la pression de Londres.

Dans son obsession de contrôler les activités de ses adversaires réels ou supposés, la monarchie a développé un empire de la #cybersurveillance et du piratage informatique, mis en évidence par l’agence Reuters. Un récent article, basé sur les témoignages d’ex-­analystes des services de renseignement américains, débauchés à prix d’or par Abu Dhabi, raconte comment l’émirat a espionné les communications de dissidents, comme Ahmed Mansour, de rivaux régionaux, comme le souverain du Qatar Tamim al­-Thani, et même de journalistes américains.

L’« islam #modéré » à la mode émiratie est prié de coller à cette ligne politique. Dans ses prêches et ses tweets, le cheikh Wassim Youssef, l’un des prédicateurs les plus en vue du pays, relaie certes le credo anti-­extrémiste des autorités, en critiquant les outrances des salafistes, accusés de dénaturer la foi musulmane. Mais cet imam de la grande mosquée d’Abu Dhabi s’attaque aussi aux libéraux, à l’émir du Qatar et à la Turquie, les deux ennemis intimes des EAU avec l’Iran.

Le cheikh Youssef n’est d’ailleurs pas exempt de dérapage : en 2015, il avait fustigé la décision de construire un temple pour les « infidèles » hindous, propos qui lui avaient valu une brève mise à pied. L’islam prôné par les autorités n’est donc pas tant éclairé que légitimiste, et l’obéissance prime sur la tolérance.

Soudan : arrestation de professeurs avant un sit-in antigouvernemental
Voice of America Afrique, le 12 février 2019
▻https://www.voaafrique.com/a/soudan-arrestation-de-professeurs-avant-un-sit-in-antigouvernemental/4783962.html

Selon un bilan officiel, 30 personnes sont mortes depuis le début du mouvement. Human Rights Watch (HRW) a fait état de 51 morts.

(...)

« Quatorze professeurs, dont 8 de l’Université de Khartoum et six d’autres universités, étaient sur le point de participer au sit-in lorsque des membres des services de renseignement les ont conduits » vers un lieu inconnu, a affirmé à Mamdouh Mohamed Hassan, porte-parole d’un groupe d’enseignants qui participe régulièrement aux manifestations.

https://gdb.voanews.com/69561AB0-534B-44EE-9830-F81DCEED4C1B_w1023_r1_s.jpg

#Soudan #répression #Université

New report exposes global reach of powerful governments who equip, finance and train other countries to spy on their populations

Privacy International has today released a report that looks at how powerful governments are financing, training and equipping countries — including authoritarian regimes — with surveillance capabilities. The report warns that rather than increasing security, this is entrenching authoritarianism.

Countries with powerful security agencies are spending literally billions to equip, finance, and train security and surveillance agencies around the world — including authoritarian regimes. This is resulting in entrenched authoritarianism, further facilitation of abuse against people, and diversion of resources from long-term development programmes.

The report, titled ‘Teach ’em to Phish: State Sponsors of Surveillance’ is available to download here.

Examples from the report include:

In 2001, the US spent $5.7 billion in security aid. In 2017 it spent over $20 billion [1]. In 2015, military and non-military security assistance in the US amounted to an estimated 35% of its entire foreign aid expenditure [2]. The report provides examples of how US Departments of State, Defense, and Justice all facilitate foreign countries’ surveillance capabilities, as well as an overview of how large arms companies have embedded themselves into such programmes, including at surveillance training bases in the US. Examples provided include how these agencies have provided communications intercept and other surveillance technology, how they fund wiretapping programmes, and how they train foreign spy agencies in surveillance techniques around the world.

The EU and individual European countries are sponsoring surveillance globally. The EU is already spending billions developing border control and surveillance capabilities in foreign countries to deter migration to Europe. For example, the EU is supporting Sudan’s leader with tens of millions of Euros aimed at capacity building for border management. The EU is now looking to massively increase its expenditure aimed at building border control and surveillance capabilities globally under the forthcoming Multiannual Financial Framework, which will determine its budget for 2021–2027. Other EU projects include developing the surveillance capabilities of security agencies in Tunisia, Burkina Faso, Somalia, Iraq and elsewhere. European countries such as France, Germany, and the UK are sponsoring surveillance worldwide, for example, providing training and equipment to “Cyber Police Officers” in Ukraine, as well as to agencies in Saudi Arabia, and across Africa.

Surveillance capabilities are also being supported by China’s government under the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ and other efforts to expand into international markets. Chinese companies have reportedly supplied surveillance capabilities to Bolivia, Venezuela, and Ecuador [3]. In Ecuador, China Electronics Corporation supplied a network of cameras — including some fitted with facial recognition capabilities — to the country’s 24 provinces, as well as a system to locate and identify mobile phones.

Edin Omanovic, Privacy International’s Surveillance Programme Lead, said

“The global rush to make sure that surveillance is as universal and pervasive as possible is as astonishing as it is disturbing. The breadth of institutions, countries, agencies, and arms companies that are involved shows how there is no real long-term policy or strategic thinking driving any of this. It’s a free-for-all, where capabilities developed by some of the world’s most powerful spy agencies are being thrown at anyone willing to serve their interests, including dictators and killers whose only goal is to cling to power.

“If these ‘benefactor’ countries truly want to assist other countries to be secure and stable, they should build schools, hospitals, and other infrastructure, and promote democracy and human rights. This is what communities need for safety, security, and prosperity. What we don’t need is powerful and wealthy countries giving money to arms companies to build border control and surveillance infrastructure. This only serves the interests of those powerful, wealthy countries. As our report shows, instead of putting resources into long-term development solutions, such programmes further entrench authoritarianism and spur abuses around the world — the very things which cause insecurity in the first place.”

https://privacyinternational.org/sites/default/files/flysystem/2018-07/State-Sponsors-cover-image-high%20%28cropped%29_1.png

▻https://privacyinternational.org/press-release/2161/press-release-new-report-exposes-global-reach-powerful-governm

#surveillance #surveillance_de_masse #rapport

Pour télécharger le rapport “Teach ’em to Phish: State Sponsors of Surveillance”:
▻https://privacyinternational.org/sites/default/files/2018-07/Teach-em-to-Phish-report.pdf

ping @fil

» Human Rights Watch Film Festival to Feature Palestinian Film ‘Screwdriver’ (Trailer)
IMEMC News - February 2, 2019
▻http://imemc.org/article/human-rights-watch-film-festival-to-feature-palestinian-film-screwdriver

The Human Rights Watch Film Festival will be presented in London from March 13-22, 2019, featuring 15 award-winning documentary and feature films, Human Rights Watch said today. The international line-up of films from Venezuela, South Africa, Palestine, Thailand, and more offer critical insight into local and global human rights concerns impacting people around the world today, PNN reports.

Many filmmakers, protagonists, Human Rights Watch researchers, and activists will take part in in-depth post-screening Q&A and panel discussions at the Barbican, BFI Southbank, and Regent Street Cinema.

The festival will open at the Barbican on March 14, with Hans Pool’s Bellingcat – Truth in a Post-Truth World, which follows the revolutionary rise of the “citizen investigative journalist” collective known as Bellingcat, dedicated to redefining breaking news by exploring the promise of open source investigation. The screening will be followed by an in-depth discussion with Hans Pool and Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins.

“At its heart, the work of Human Rights Watch is front-line investigations by expert researchers who check and cross-check facts,” said John Biaggi, director of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. “In this so-called ‘post-truth era’, it is particularly relevant for us to open the 23rd edition of the festival with a film that considers the possibilities and implications of citizen journalism. We are excited to open with ‘Bellingcat – Truth in a Post-Truth World,’ a compelling look at the methods and means of this media disrupter”.

(...)

Shot entirely on location in the West Bank with a largely Palestinian crew, the award-winning director Bassam Jarbawi’s debut feature Screwdriver highlights the universal trauma of reintegration after incarceration. Ziad returns home after 15 years in an Israeli jail. Hailed as a hero, with high expectations to settle back quickly into work and love, he is lost in a world he barely recognizes. Effectively capturing this unsettling inability to distinguish reality from hallucination and the haunting of memory, the film immerses viewers in a distinctly Palestinian story.

This year’s Human Rights Watch benefit gala and reception will take place on March 13 at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), screening Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck’s documentary The Cleaners, which raises essential questions over internet control and the life-threatening erasure of entire resistance movements from the world’s sight.

Audiences also have an opportunity to watch selected festival titles online thanks to the continuing partnership with MUBI mubi.com/humanrightswatch.

Child Inmates of South Korea’s Immigration Jail

https://pbs.twimg.com/card_img/1086413182258823168/oZA-nTaF?format=jpg&name=600x314#.jpg

Helene* had a challenge that no mother would want. She, with her husband, was a refugee in a foreign land with a foreign language, trying despite all odds to raise her children as best she could. If this weren’t enough of a challenge, Helene was in jail, locked up in a 10-person cell with others she didn’t know. The only time she could leave her cell was for a 30-minute exercise time each day. But her task was more daunting still. Her children were locked up with her.

Helene’s jail was an immigration detention facility, and her crime was not having enough money to begin refugee applicant proceedings. She spent 23 days in that cell with her two sons. Her oldest, Emerson, was three years and eight months old, and her youngest, Aaron, was only 13 months old. She watched their mental health and physical health slowly deteriorate while her pleadings for help fell on deaf ears.

*

In June, American news media were shocked by the revelation that migrant children, who were only guilty of not possessing legal migrant status, were being held in large-scale detention facilities. This was something new—a part of President Donald Trump’s ‘tough on immigration’ stance.

In South Korea, detaining children simply due to their migration status, or the migration status of their parents, is standard practice.

Children make up a very small percentage of the total picture of unregistered migrants in South Korea. However, as the nation’s foreign population reaches 2 million and beyond, that small percentage becomes a large number in real terms. The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) doesn’t keep statistics on the exact number of unregistered child migrants in the country.

Most unregistered child migrants in South Korea fall into one of two broad categories: teenagers who come alone, and infants or toddlers brought by their parents or born to migrants already living in the country. In both cases, the majority of children (or their parents) come from other parts of Asia seeking work in the industrial sector.

These children often end up in detention facilities when immigration authorities carry out routine crackdowns targeting workplaces in industrial districts or transportation routes workers use to get to these districts. Authorities, by policy, detain any unregistered migrant who is 14 or older. Younger children are technically exempt from detention orders, but parents are often caught in crackdowns while with their children. The parents can’t leave their children on the street to fend for themselves, and so, left with no other options, they choose to bring their children with them into the detention facilities.

Helene’s case was different. She and her husband brought their sons to South Korea with them when they fled religious persecution in their home country of Liberia. The South Korean government rejected their refugee applications, and the family only had enough money to begin a legal challenge for one person. Emerson and Aaron, along with Helene, became unregistered migrants.

How they were detained would be comical if their case were not so tragic. After a trip to a hospital, the family was trying to board a subway to return home. Their stroller could not fit through the turnstiles, and after a brief altercation an upset station manager called the police. The police asked to see the family’s papers, but only Helene’s husband had legal status. The police were obligated to arrest Helene due to her unregistered status and turn her over to immigration authorities. Because her children were very young – the youngest was still breastfeeding – she had no viable option but to bring her children with her.

*

Helene and her sons were sent to an immigration detention facility in Hwaseong, some 60 kilometers southwest of Seoul. Inside and out, the facility is indistinguishable from a prison. Detainees wear blue jumpsuits with the ironic Korean phrase “protected foreigner” printed in large white letters on the back. They live in 10-person cells with cement walls and steel bars at the front. Each cell has a small common area up front with tables, a sleeping area in the middle, and a bathroom at the back.

For detainees, these cells become the entirety of their existence until they are released. Food is delivered through a gap in the bars, and the only opportunity to leave the cell is for a brief 30-minute exercise period each day.

These facilities were never intended to house children, and authorities make little to no effort to accommodate them. Young children have to live in a cell with a parent and as many as eight other adults, all unknown to the child. The detention center doesn’t provide access to pediatricians, child appropriate play and rest time, or even food suitable for young children.

Government policy states that education is provided only for children detained for more than 30 days. Children have no other children to interact with, and no space to play or explore. During daytime, when the sleeping mats are rolled up and stored, the sleeping area becomes a large open space where children could play. According to Helene, whenever her sons entered that area guards would shout at them to come back to the common area at the front of the cell.

Emerson’s fear of the guards’ reprimand grew to the point that he refused to use the toilets at the back of the cell because that would mean crossing the sleeping area, instead choosing to soil himself. Even after the family was eventually released, Emerson’s psychological trauma and his refusal to use bathrooms remained.

The stress and anxiety of being locked in a prison cell naturally takes a severe toll on children’s wellbeing. Like the adults they’re detained with, they don’t know what will happen to them or when they will be released. Unlike the adults, they don’t understand why they are in a prison cell to begin with. Without any way to alleviate the situation, the stress and anxiety they feel turn into mental disorders. These conditions can include depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and even increased rates of suicide and self-harm.

Kim Jong Chul has seen many examples of these symptoms firsthand. Kim is a lawyer with APIL, a public interest law firm, and he’s worked to secure the release of many migrant children held in detention.

In one such case, May, a 5-year-old migrant from China, spent 20 days in a detention facility with her mother. Over those 20 days, May’s extreme anxiety produced insomnia, a high fever, swollen lips and more. Despite this, her guards never brought a doctor to examine her.

For most migrants in immigration custody, children included, their release comes only when they are deported. In 2016, authorities held 29,926 migrants in detention, and 96 percent of them were deported. The whole deportation process, from arrest to boarding a plane, typically takes ten days.

But for children, ten days in detention are enough to develop severe stress and anxiety. Special cases, including refugee applications or a migrant laborer with unpaid wages, can take much longer to process. South Korea’s immigration law doesn’t set an upper limit on migrant detention, and there are cases of migrants held for more than a year. The law also doesn’t require regular judicial review or in-person checks from a case worker at any point in the process. According to Kim from APIL, the longest child detention in recent years was 141 days.

Existing children’s welfare services would benefit migrant children, but the MOJ opposes any such idea. In the view of the MOJ and the Ministry of Health and Welfare, welfare facilities should be reserved only for citizens and foreigners with legal status.

Children between the ages of 14 and 18 are yet another matter. The MOJ’s stance is that most of these children are physically similar to adults, highly likely to commit crimes and in general a danger to society, and they need to be detained.

Kim argues that it’s hard to interpret the MOJ’s stance that migrant teenagers are all potential criminals as anything other than institutional racism. South Korean citizens who are under 18 are considered minors and treated differently in the eyes of the law.

International treaties ban detaining children, including teenagers, due to migration status, and the South Korean government has signed and ratified each of the UN treaties that relate to children’s rights. It means that under the country’s constitution, the treaties have the same power as domestic law. And yet abuses persist.

Lawmaker Keum Tae-seob from the ruling Minjoo Party—often called one of the most progressive members of the National Assembly— is fighting this reality. He has proposed a revision to the current immigration law that would ban detention of migrant children, but it has met opposition from the MOJ. Ironically, the ministry argues that because South Korea has signed the relevant international treaties, there is no need to pass a separate domestic law that would ban such detention. This is despite the fact that immigration authorities, who belong to the MOJ, have detained over 200 children over the past 3 years, including many under the age of 14.

To rally support for a ban on detaining migrant children, APIL and World Vision Korea launched an awareness campaign in 2016, complete with a slick website, emotional videos and a petition. As of this writing, the petition has just under 9,000 signatures, and APIL is hoping to reach 10,000.
Back in June of last year, another petition received significant media attention. A group of Yemeni refugee applicants—fewer than 600—arrived on the island of Jeju, and in response a citizen’s petition against accepting refugees on the office of the president’s website garnered over 714,000 signatures. A collection of civic groups even organized an anti-refugee rally in Seoul that same month.

APIL’s campaign has been underway for more than two years, but the recent reaction to Yemeni refugees in Jeju has unveiled how difficult it will be change the government’s position on asylum seekers. A Human Rights Watch report released on Thursday also minced no words in critiquing the government policies: “even though [South Korean president] Moon Jae-in is a former human rights lawyer,” he “did little to defend the rights of women, refugees, and LGBT persons in South Korea.”

For now, Keum’s bill is still sitting in committee, pending the next round of reviews. Helene’s family has been in the UK since her husband’s refugee status lawsuit failed.

*Helene is a pseudonym to protect the identity of her and her family.

▻https://www.koreaexpose.com/child-migrant-inmates-south-korea-immigration-jail-hwaseong
#enfants #enfance #mineurs #rétention #détention_administrative #Corée_du_Sud #migrations #sans-papiers #réfugiés #asile

Human Rights Watch | Conditions de détention abjectes en Libye
▻https://asile.ch/2019/01/23/human-rights-watch-conditions-de-detention-abjectes-en-libye

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La politique migratoire de l’Union européenne contribue au cycle d’abus subis par les migrants détenus en Libye, a déclaré Human Rights Watch dans un rapport publié le 21 janvier 2019. Le soutien apporté par l’UE et l’Italie aux gardes-côtes libyens est un facteur important contribuant à leur interception de migrants et de demandeurs d’asile, qui […]

Il manque 80 millions de femmes en Chine et en Inde, estime Human Rights Watch
▻https://www.liberation.fr/planete/2019/01/19/il-manque-80-millions-de-femmes-en-chine-et-en-inde-estime-human-rights-w

#viol #misogynie #hommerie

A eux seuls, les deux pays les plus peuplés du monde comptent ainsi un trop-plein d’hommes, avec pour corollaire une « pénurie de femmes mariées », explique Heather Barr. Derrière ces termes un peu barbares se cache une amère réalité, celle des atroces méthodes auxquelles recourent certains hommes pour parvenir à conclure un mariage (forcé) et assurer leur descendance. Dans les Etats en conflit du Kachin et du Shan, au nord de la Birmanie, par exemple, des trafiquants attirent parfois les jeunes femmes en leur faisant miroiter une vie fantasmée en Chine, où elles seront finalement rachetées entre 3 000 et 13 000 dollars (selon l’âge et l’apparence) par des familles en quête d’une épouse pour leur fils.

« Une fois achetées, ces femmes et filles sont généralement enfermées dans une pièce et violées de manière répétée, afin de les mettre enceinte rapidement pour qu’elles puissent donner un bébé à la famille. Après avoir accouché, certaines sont autorisées à repartir, mais contraintes de laisser leurs enfants derrière elles », dénonce Heather Barr, qui s’appuie sur les investigations d’Human Rights Watch. Si l’avortement sélectif est en principe interdit en Inde et en Chine, il est difficilement détectable et encore fréquemment pratiqué, empêchant la résorption du déséquilibre hommes-femmes. Ces deux pays, « et d’autres touchés, doivent agir de toute urgence pour atténuer les effets du déclin du nombre de femmes, et examiner attentivement les conséquences de cette pénurie, y compris en relation avec la traite et les violences à l’égard des femmes », écrit-elle.

Au Japon, la prison comme maison de retraite, Philippe Pons
▻https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2019/01/14/au-japon-la-prison-comme-maison-de-retraite_5408603_3210.html

Pour pallier pauvreté et solitude, des Japonais de plus de 65 ans se font arrêter pour de menus larcins, contraignant les prisons à s’adapter à de nouvelles contraintes.

Il se chauffait au soleil d’hiver dans ce petit parc désert du quartier à la population aux revenus modestes d’Arakawa, au nord de Tokyo. Agé, emmitouflé dans une parka qui avait connu des jours meilleurs, un bonnet sur le crâne, il portait une barbichette clairsemée. Echange de sourires. La conversation s’engage sur l’hiver ensoleillé japonais, la vie d’autrefois, la pension insuffisante, la #solitude des personnes âgées… « Demain j’irai à la #prison voir un ami, ce n’est pas un criminel, il a mon âge [78 ans] et il a été arrêté pour un #vol à l’étalage dans une supérette. Il voulait se faire arrêter. En prison, il a chaud, il est nourri et s’il est malade, on s’occupe de lui… Comme il est récidiviste, il en a pris pour deux ans… Un jour il faudra peut-être que je fasse comme lui. »

Le Japon a le plus faible taux de criminalité du monde et une population carcérale relativement peu nombreuse par rapport à d’autres démocraties avancées. Mais celle-ci vieillit vite. Reflet de l’évolution démographique de l’archipel ? Pas seulement.

Sénilité et incontinence

Le Japon a la médaille d’or en espérance de vie mais la proportion des actifs dans la population se réduit et un quart de la population a plus de 65 ans (40 % en 2050). La délinquance de Japonais âgés (et surtout des femmes de la même tranche d’âge) est un phénomène apparu depuis une décennie qui va en s’aggravant.

Selon le « Livre blanc sur la criminalité » de décembre 2018, 21,1 % des personnes arrêtées en 2017 avaient plus de 65 ans alors qu’en 2000, cette tranche d’âge ne représentait que 5,8 % de la population carcérale. Les délinquants âgés sont arrêtés pour de menus larcins. La majorité vole des produits alimentaires pour se nourrir ou améliorer l’ordinaire. Une minorité dit préférer la prison à une vie au seuil de la #pauvreté (ou en dessous) et à la solitude.

L’arrivée de seniors dans les prisons a créé de nouvelles charges pour l’administration pénitentiaire. Ces détenus âgés présentent souvent les symptômes dus à la #vieillesse : ils entendent mal et tardent à exécuter les ordres ; certains sont incontinents, d’autres ont des problèmes de mobilité et il faut parfois les aider à se nourrir et à se laver : un surcroît de travail pour les gardiens. « Certains errent sans savoir où ils sont », écrit Yamamoto Joji dans Ceux qui ont élu domicile en prison, livre de souvenirs sur l’année que l’auteur a passé derrière les barreaux, publié en 2018.

Des détenus âgés présentent en outre des symptômes de sénilité : selon le ministère de la justice, en 2016, c’était le cas d’un sur dix des plus de 65 ans. À partir de 2019 a été institué un examen psychologique pour les prisonniers de plus de 60 ans. Ceux qui sont diagnostiqués séniles bénéficient d’un traitement spécial. Des prisons ont aussi commencé à aménager des quartiers réservés aux détenus âgés. La prison devient pour certains l’équivalent d’une maison de retraite et leur incarcération revient à une sorte de prise en charge par l’Etat compensant l’insuffisance des #retraites.

Hausse des « morts solitaires »

Au lendemain de la guerre, trois générations pouvaient vivre sous le même toit puis la famille monoparentale s’est imposée et les seniors ont commencé à vivre seuls… et de plus en plus vieux. Divorcés ou ayant perdu leur conjoint, sans famille ou se refusant par fierté à demander de l’aide, six millions de Japonais âgés vivent dans un isolement quasi total et meurent ainsi. Les « #morts_solitaires » sont en augmentation constante : plus de 30 000 en 2016. Selon une enquête de la municipalité de Tokyo, 40 % de ces morts solitaires n’avaient pas de famille ni d’amis.

Les #femmes sont les plus touchées par la détresse de la vieillesse : dans leur cas, la solitude se conjugue à la précarité financière. Beaucoup de Japonaises âgées vivent sous le seuil de pauvreté en raison d’une retraite insuffisante à la suite du décès du mari. Et elles seraient plus nombreuses que les hommes à chercher à se faire emprisonner : en 2017, une détenue sur cinq était âgée de plus de 65 ans. Quand elles sortent, elles récidivent plus que les hommes. Globalement, un quart des anciens détenus de plus de 65 ans récidive dans les deux ans qui suivent leur libération. Ce taux, le plus élevé toutes tranches d’âge confondues, contribue à l’augmentation des seniors dans la population carcérale.

« La prison est une oasis pour moi. J’ai perdu ma liberté mais je n’ai plus à m’occuper de rien. Je peux parler avec d’autres détenues, je mange trois fois par jour, disait une détenue de 78 ans interrogée par l’agence Bloomberg en mars 2018. Ma fille me rend visite une fois par mois. Elle me trouve pathétique. Elle a sans doute raison. »

L’homme à la barbichette du parc est pensif : « On peut comprendre les récidivistes. La vie est dure dehors. Mon ami dit qu’en prison au moins, il ne se préoccupe de rien… Et dehors, personne ne l’attendra quand il sortira. Sinon moi, si je suis en vie. » Des détenus âgés meurent en prison. Après la crémation (obligatoire au Japon), leurs cendres sont envoyées à un parent – s’il en existe un connu de l’administration.

430,000 flee Cameroon’s restive Anglophone areas, says group

An international refugee agency says that more than 430,000 people have fled violence in Cameroon’s restive English-speaking regions and are hiding in rural areas with few resources.

The Norwegian Refugee Council, one of several humanitarian organizations offering support, said Wednesday it is assisting the displaced by providing shelter and supplies to needy families. David Manan, the Norwegian group’s country director for Cameroon, called for more international aid.

He said there are too few agencies on the ground to provide the amount of aid needed. He said many people are hiding in the bush.

Cameroon’s English-speaking separatists have been protesting since 2016 against what they claim is discrimination by the French-speaking majority. Their protests were initially peaceful, but in response to a government crackdown some separatists are waging a violent campaign.

▻https://www.thestate.com/news/nation-world/world/article223306000.html
#Cameroun #Cameroun_anglophone #asile #migrations #réfugiés #COI #IDPs #déplacés_internes

#Jessica_Neuwirth : Atteinte injustifiable aux droits humains des femmes piégées dans l’industrie du sexe
▻https://tradfem.wordpress.com/2018/12/15/atteinte-injustifiable-aux-droits-humains-des-femmes-piegees-dans

Il y a soixante-dix ans, la Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme (DUDH) était signée au Palais de Chaillot à Paris. Après deux guerres mondiales dévastatrices, l’Assemblée générale des Nations Unies définissait une toute nouvelle vision des droits humains que le monde entier pourrait accepter d’adopter. C’est encore aujourd’hui la référence pour la plupart des organisations de défense de ces droits.

La première ligne de la Déclaration affirme de manière claire et convaincante que tous les êtres humains naissent libres et égaux. Dans la pratique, la liberté et l’égalité sont les fondements sur lesquels reposent tous les autres droits humains fondamentaux.

La Déclaration universelle reconnaît également que nul ne doit être tenu en esclavage ou en servitude. Cela comprend les millions de femmes et de filles qui sont captives d’une industrie du sexe dévastatrice.

Malgré la clarté de cette question dans l’esprit des défenderesses des droits des femmes et des survivantes de la prostitution, certains organismes des Nations Unies – dont ONUSIDA et le PNUD, ainsi que certains groupes de défense des droits de l’homme de premier plan comme Human Rights Watch et Amnesty International – ont ignoré ce principe fondamental et ont plutôt réclamé la décriminalisation du proxénétisme, de la tenue de bordels et de la consommation de sexe par les prostitueurs.

Traduction : #Tradfem
Version originale : ▻http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/12/undermining-human-rights-women-trapped-sex-trade
#système_prostitutionnel #déclaration_des_droits_humains #vulnérabilité #violences

EN TUNISIE, L’EGALITE DEVANT L’HERITAGE ENCOURAGERAIT L’ENTREPRENEURIAT FEMININ (Le Monde Arabe-Mounira ELBOUTI-2018-12-04)

Aujourd’hui, les Tunisiennes sont considérées comme « non capables d’assurer une succession appropriée », indique un entrepreneur tunisien.

Fin novembre dernier, le Conseil des ministres adoptait le projet de loi consacrant l’égalité entre les femmes et les hommes devant l’héritage en Tunisie. Et dans la foulée, le président tunisien, Béji Caïd Essebsi, à l’origine de la réforme, le soumettait à l’Assemblée des représentants du peuple (ARP), qui ne devrait pas se prononcer dessus avant plusieurs mois. L’initiative, une première dans le monde arabe, résulte notamment des recommandations de la Commission des libertés individuelles et de l’égalité (COLIBE). Qui, en juin dernier, avait estimé que Tunis devait effectuer des réformes substantielles concernant l’égalité entre les sexes et les libertés individuelles dans le pays. Réformes qui, longtemps revendiquées par une partie de la société civile tunisienne, doivent in fine servir à remettre en cause le système patriarcal en Tunisie, largement fondé sur la subordination des femmes.
Ce n’est pas un hasard si le « berceau » des printemps arabes a décidé de s’emparer le premier du sujet. Le pays accorde bien plus de droit aux femmes que tout autre dans la région, et permet depuis un an aux Tunisiennes de confessions musulmane, d’épouser des hommes non musulmans. Ce qui n’empêche pas une fracture, dans la société, entre les pro et les anti-égalité de genre devant l’héritage. (Le système actuel, fondé sur la loi islamique, permet généralement aux hommes d’hériter du double de ce qu’une femme recevrait.) Face aux vives critiques provenant, notamment, d’Ennahdha – le parti islamiste, qui dispose de 30 % des sièges parlementaires, est le seul à avoir annoncé son opposition au projet de loi -, le président tunisien a assorti son texte de quelques exceptions. Les familles désirant poursuivre sous le régime de la charia étant autorisées à le faire.

« Dynamisme, prudence et conformité »

Si l’adoption de la loi est fondamentale pour le droit des femmes – dont les revendications doivent nécessairement s’émanciper de la question de l’ « identité arabo-musulmane » afin d’être traitées sur le terrain des droits humains, nous expliquait Leïla Tauil, chercheure et spécialiste de la question féministe, en octobre dernier -, elle s’avère également très intéressante d’un point de vue économique.
Au printemps dernier, la Société financière internationale, filiale de la Banque mondiale pour le secteur privé, a publié un rapport, intitulé « Miser sur les femmes en Tunisie », soulignant l’importance des prêts bancaires aux Tunisiennes pour l’économie du pays. Or, lors de l’évaluation d’un projet, les banques ne s’intéressent en général pas à sa qualité ni à celle de l’entrepreneur, mais aux garanties apportés par ce dernier. Et la loi sur l’héritage actuelle, qui réduit de facto l’autonomie économique des femmes, les empêche d’accéder à la propriété – les Tunisiennes ne sont que 12 % à posséder une maison et 14 % un terrain. Difficile, dans ces conditions, d’obtenir un prêt bancaire pour démarrer ou poursuivre une activité entrepreneuriale. Si bien que les femmes, en Tunisie, ne possèdent qu’entre 18 et 23 % des entreprises, selon le rapport de la Société financières internationale. Qui indique également que la différence de crédit combiné, pour les petites sociétés, entre les femmes et les hommes, atteint près de 600 millions de dollars…
« Bien que la Tunisie dispose des lois les plus progressistes de la région en matière de droits des femmes […] cela ne s’est pas traduit proportionnellement par une participation économique à grande échelle des femmes », pointe du doigt le rapport de la Société financière internationale.
Un sacré frein au développement de leur business, qui pourrait cependant être un peu plus lâche, si les Tunisiennes obtenaient davantage de biens, et donc de garanties, grâce à… un héritage égalitaire. La Société financière internationale l’a bien compris et incite vivement à accélérer les opportunités financières pour les Tunisiennes – et, globalement, toutes les citoyennes. D’autant plus que les établissements bancaires en sortiraient gagnants. Selon l’enquête de l’organisation internationale, les femmes seraient plus fidèles que les hommes à leur banque, à condition d’être traitées sur un même pied d’égalité et d’y recevoir des services satisfaisants. Sans compter que les entreprises qu’elles gèrent affichent de meilleurs résultats, et « sont connues, en particulier parmi les institutions de micro-finance, pour leur dynamisme, leur prudence et leur conformité ».

Le paradoxe Ennahdha

Interrogé sur l’impact de l’égalité entre femmes et hommes devant l’héritage en Tunisie, Wajdi Ben Rjeb, entrepreneur tunisien, estime que la loi donnerait « un coup de pouce au leadership féminin, par le biais de l’entrepreneuriat ou de la succession ». Aujourd’hui, explique-t-il, les femmes, souvent considérées comme « non prioritaires ou non capables d’assurer une succession appropriée », se voient attribuer « un héritage moins intéressant que leurs frères, aussi bien en terme de valeur que de potentiel ». Ce qui explique qu’il y a « peu de femmes aux commandes des entreprises familiales tunisiennes ayant passé le cap de la 2ème génération », dirigées plutôt par les fils. Un tropisme qui pourrait s’équilibrer avec la loi sur l’héritage, qui, selon Wajdi Ben Rjeb, « va apporter une égalité des chances en matière de succession et encouragera l’accès des femmes aux postes de haute direction et aux conseils d’administration des entreprises familiales. »
Car cela n’est pas encore assez le cas. D’après l’OCDE (Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques), qui a publié en mars dernier un rapport sur l’économie tunisienne, en termes d’emplois, « les disparités hommes-femmes sont moins importantes que dans les autres pays MENA [Moyen-Orient et Afrique du Nord, ndlr] mais le taux d’emploi est bien plus faible pour les femmes que pour les hommes et les femmes occupent souvent des emplois moins qualifiés. » Et si les autorités tunisiennes, qui composent avec une embellie économique, veulent rendre la croissance davantage inclusive, elles doivent « favoriser le recrutement des femmes par des campagnes de sensibilisation sur les conséquences des choix éducatifs et de la formation sur les possibilités d’emploi et d’entrepreneuriat », estime l’OCDE.
A charge pour Tunis, si la loi est adoptée à l’ARP, de faire progresser la notion d’entrepreneuriat féminin, en multipliant ainsi les initiatives éducatives pour aider les Tunisiennes à comprendre comment tirer parti de leurs nouveaux droits et atouts. Les débats, en raison des postures conservatrices d’une partie des politiques, promettent d’être mouvementés. Mais « le Parlement devrait adopter ce projet de loi et réaffirmer la place de la Tunisie comme leader régional dans le démantèlement de la discrimination juridique fondée sur le sexe », a déclaré Ahmed Benchemsi, directeur de la communication et du plaidoyer pour le Moyen-Orient et l’Afrique du Nord chez Human Rights Watch. Ce dernier de noter toutefois le paradoxe Ennahdha, luttant « contre l’égalité dans les lois relatives aux successions, alors que le parti a soutenu d’autres réformes en faveur des droits de femmes. » Réponse dans quelques mois.

Tracking China’s Muslim Gulag
▻https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-camps-china

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/assets/muslims-camps-china/mastheads/Xinjiang_share_card.png?v=344820281118

China is accused of incarcerating hundreds of thousands of Muslims in detention camps that are rising from the desert sands in Xinjiang. A forensic analysis of satellite images of 39 of these facilities shows they are expanding at a rapid rate.

#chine #camps_de_travail #musulman #Ouïghours #détention

A l’occasion du G20, le criminel en chef saoudien va-t-il devoir rendre des comptes ?
27 novembre 2018 – Al Jazeera – Traduction : Chronique de Palestine
▻http://www.chroniquepalestine.com/occasion-g20-criminel-en-chef-saoudien-va-t-il-rendre-des-compte

Human Rights Watch a soumis une demande d’enquête à l’Argentine avant l’arrivée de Mohammed bin Salman au sommet du G20.

L’Argentine a été fermement sollicitée pour interroger le prince héritier saoudien Mohammed bin Salman pour des crimes de guerre au Yémen et pour le meurtre du journaliste Jamal Khashoggi.

Human Rights Watch, basé à New York, a déclaré avoir soumis lundi la demande au juge fédéral argentin Ariel Lijo.

Sarah Leah Whitson, directrice de HRW pour le Moyen-Orient et l’Afrique du Nord, a déclaré que le groupe de défense des droits de l’homme s’était rendu en Argentine parce que le prince Mohammed, également, connu sous le nom de MBS, assistera à l’ouverture du sommet du G20 cette semaine à Buenos Aires.

La constitution argentine reconnaît la compétence universelle en matière de crimes de guerre et de torture, ce qui signifie que les autorités judiciaires peuvent enquêter sur ces crimes et engager des poursuites, quel que soit le lieu où ils ont été commis. (...)

L’Europe utilisera-t-elle les drones israéliens contre les réfugiés ?

En matière de sécurité, #Israël en connait un rayon. Ses entreprises sont particulièrement actives sur ce marché lucratif et peuvent démontrer l’efficacité de leurs produits en prenant les Palestiniens comme cobayes. Pour contrôler l’arrivée de réfugiés, l’agence européenne #Frontex s’intéresse ainsi de près au drone #Heron. L’engin a fait ses “preuves au combat” durant l’#opération_Plomb durci. (IGA)

En septembre, l’Agence de surveillance des frontières de l’Union européenne Frontex a annoncé le démarrage de vols d’essais de drones en #Italie, en #Grèce et au #Portugal. Il y avait une omission majeure dans la déclaration de Frontex : le type de drones testé avait été utilisé auparavant pour attaquer Gaza.

Certains détails sur les compagnies impliquées dans ces essais ont été publiés plus tôt cette année. Un « avis d’attribution de marché » a révélé qu’#Israel_Aerospace_Industries était l’un des deux fournisseurs sélectionnés.

Israel Aerospace Industries a reçu 5.,5 millions de dollars pour jusqu’à 600 heures de vols d’essais.

Le drone qu’Israel Aerospace Industries offre pour la #surveillance maritime s’appelle le #Heron.

http://tlaxcala-int.org/upload/gal_13517.jpg

Selon le propre site web de la compagnie, le Heron a « fait ses preuves au combat ». C’est une expression codée signifiant qu’il a été employé pendant trois attaques majeures d’Israël contre Gaza pendant la dernière décennie.

Après l’opération Plomb durci, l’attaque israélienne sur Gaza de fin 2008 et début 2009, une enquête de Human Rights Watch a conclu que des dizaines de civils avaient été tués par des missiles lancés à partir de drones. Le Heron a été identifié comme l’un des principaux drones déployés dans cette offensive.

Frontex – qui expulse fréquemment des réfugiés d’Europe – a étudié les #drones depuis un certain temps. Déjà en 2012, Israel Aerospace Industries avait présenté le Heron à un événement organisé par Frontex.

Par ses vols d’essais, Frontex permet à l’industrie de guerre israélienne d’adapter la technologie testée sur les Palestiniens à des fins de surveillance. Alors que les dirigeants de l’Union européenne professent couramment leur souci des droits humains, l’implication de fabricants d’armes pour surveiller les frontières partage plus que quelques similitudes avec les politiques belliqueuses poursuivies par le gouvernement de Donald Trump aux USA.

Des opportunités commerciales

Les entreprises israéliennes bénéficient des décisions prises des deux côtés de l’Atlantique.

L’année dernière, #Elta – une filiale d’Israel Aerospace Industries – a été engagée pour dessiner un prototype pour le mur controversé que Trump a proposé d’établir le long de la frontière USA- Mexique. Elbit, un autre fabricant israélien de drones, a gagné en 2014 un contrat pour construire des tours de surveillance entre l’Arizona et le Mexique.

Les mêmes compagnies poursuivent les opportunités commerciales en Europe.

Elta a été en contact avec divers gouvernements à propos de leur système « de #patrouille_virtuelle des #frontières » – qui est basé sur l’interception des communications téléphoniques des mobiles et l’#espionnage des usagers d’internet. Pour fournir un prétexte à une telle intrusion, la compagnie joue sur la politique de la #peur. Amnon Sofrin, un dirigeant d’Elta qui occupait auparavant une position de premier plan dans l’agence israélienne d’espionnage et d’assassinat du Mossad, a recommandé que l’Europe choisisse en priorité la « #sécurité » plutôt que les libertés civiles.

L’entreprise israélienne #Magal_Systems cherche aussi des contrats en Europe. Magal a installé ce qu’elle appelle une barrière « intelligente » — livrée avec des capteurs et un équipement avancé de caméras – le long de la frontière d’Israël avec Gaza.

Saar Koush, jusqu’à récemment le PDG de Magal, a argué que le rôle de l’entreprise dans la mise en place d’un siège des deux millions d’habitants de Gaza leur donnait un argument commercial unique – ou au moins rare. « Tout le monde peut vous donner un très joli Powerpoint, mais peu de gens peuvent vous montrer un projet aussi complexe que Gaza, qui est constamment testé en combat », a dit Koush.

Apprendre d’Israël ?

Frontex est en contact avec d’autres entreprises israéliennes.

En juin de cette année, l’Union européenne a publié une notice montrant que la compagnie israélienne #Windward avait gagné un contrat de près d’ 1 million de dollars pour travailler à un projet d’« analyse maritime » organisé par Frontex. #Gabi_Ashkenazi, un ancien chef de l’armée israélienne, est conseiller à Windward ; #David_Petraeus, qui a commandé les troupes US occupant l’Irak et l’Afghanistan, est l’un de ses investisseurs.

Dans son rapport annuel 2016, Frontex déclarait que « les premiers pas avaient été faits afin de développer des relations « stratégiques » avec Israël. Frontex a ultérieurement exprimé son intention d’accroître cette coopération d’ici 2020.

Un point clé est « l’apprentissage mutuel ». Il est plus que probable qu’il s’agisse d’un euphémisme pour échanger des notes sur les tactiques qui devraient être utilisées contre les gens fuyant la pauvreté ou la persécution.

Israël a une réputation effroyable en ce qui concerne le traitement des réfugiés. Des Africains vivant en Israël ont été sujets à des mauvais traitements racistes de la part des plus hauts niveaux du gouvernement. Benjamin Netanyahou, le Premier ministre, les a étiquetés comme des « infiltrés ».

Un autre ministre du gouvernement a soutenu que les Africains ne peuvent être considérés comme des humains.

Selon l’institut de sondage Gallup, Israël est l’un des pays les moins hospitaliers du monde pour les demandeurs d’asile. Malgré sa proximité géographique avec la Syrie, Israël a refusé l’entrée aux victimes de la guerre en cours.

L’an dernier, Netanyahou a été entendu disant aux dirigeants du groupe de Visegrad (ou Visegrad 4) – la Hongrie, la Pologne, la République tchèque et la Slovaquie – qu’ils devraient fermer leurs frontières aux réfugiés. Il a aussi déclaré qu’Israël joue un rôle important dans la réduction de la migration vers l’Europe et suggéré qu’Israël devrait être récompensé pour cela.

L’identification d’Israël comme partenaire pour une « coopération stratégique » avec Frontex est inquiétante en soi. Les préparatifs pour utiliser les outils de répression d’Israël contre les réfugiés faisant route vers l’Europe le sont encore plus.

http://tlaxcala-int.org/upload/gal_8617.jpg

▻https://www.investigaction.net/fr/leurope-utilisera-t-elle-les-drones-israeliens-contre-les-refugies

#surveillance_frontalière #frontières #contrôles_frontaliers #asile #migrations #réfugiés #sécurité #Méditerranée #Heron #Israeli_Aerospace_Industries #Gaza #business

En Israël, la culture est prise entre deux feux
Pierre Sorgue, Le Monde, le 16 novembre 2018
▻https://www.lemonde.fr/m-actu/article/2018/11/16/en-israel-la-culture-est-prise-entre-deux-feux_5384505_4497186.html

Lana Del Rey, Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel ou Arcade Fire… L’appel au boycott d’Israël pour dénoncer le sort des Palestiniens rencontre de plus en plus d’écho chez les artistes. Un dilemme pour le monde de la culture israélien.

A trois heures du matin, The Block est à bloc. Le plus célèbre club électro de Tel-Aviv, enfoui sous le béton de la gare routière centrale, reçoit Carl Craig, ponte de la techno de Detroit (Michigan) aux Etats-Unis.

La foule ondule, saute, tressaute au rythme des basses, dans le brouillard bleu que découpent les faisceaux de projecteurs épileptiques.

BDS pour Boycott, désinvestissement, sanctions

Yaron Trax, le maître des lieux, s’est glissé entre les danseurs pour s’assurer des bons réglages de sa sono analogique, réputée l’une des meilleures du monde. Le quadragénaire aux airs adolescents est aux anges parmi ces jeunes gens dont beaucoup sont venus au club comme ils étaient à la plage, en short et tee-shirt. Celui que porte Yaron ce soir-là reproduit les briques et la typographie reconnaissable entre toutes : Pink Floyd, The Wall. Lorsqu’on lui fait remarquer, il sourit comme un enfant contrit : « C’est un tee-shirt formidable et l’album l’est aussi. Quel dommage que Roger Waters soit devenu aussi décevant… »

Car le musicien britannique, ex-membre de Pink Floyd, est le spectre qui hante la scène israélienne et dérange l’intelligentsia de gauche, celui qui empêche la bulle libérale et hédoniste qu’est Tel-Aviv de flotter innocemment à cinquante kilomètres du mouroir à ciel ouvert qu’est la bande de Gaza.

Depuis des années, Roger Waters offre sa voix aux militants internationaux du BDS (Boycott, désinvestissement, sanctions), mouvement né en 2005 de la société civile palestinienne, un an après que la Cour internationale de justice a jugé illégal le mur de séparation construit entre Israël et les territoires occupés.

Il prône les pressions sur l’État d’Israël pour parvenir à ce que n’ont jamais obtenu des décennies de guerre, de résolutions de l’ONU et de vains processus de paix pendant lesquels le nombre des colons n’a cessé de croître (500 000 aujourd’hui) : la fin de l’occupation des territoires, la pleine égalité pour les citoyens palestiniens d’Israël, le droit au retour des réfugiés chassés de leurs terres.

La scène musicale comme estrade politique

Il suffit de voir les gratte-ciel bleutés qui poussent à Tel-Aviv pour s’en convaincre : le boycott économique n’a que peu d’effets. La « start-up nation » se porte bien, ses relations commerciales et diplomatiques n’ont cessé de se développer avec l’Afrique, l’Inde, la Chine, voire certains pays arabes. En ce mois d’octobre encore estival, les plages sont noires de monde, les ruelles de la vieille ville de Jérusalem, pleines de visiteurs : le pays aura accueilli plus de 4 millions de touristes à la fin de l’année, soit 46 % de plus qu’en 2016.

Au-delà du portefeuille, le BDS s’attaque aussi aux cœurs et aux têtes. Il appelle au boycott culturel et académique, comme celui qui s’exerçait sur l’Afrique du Sud au temps de l’apartheid. Et celui-là trouve, ces derniers mois, un écho bien supérieur. Depuis longtemps, la scène musicale sert d’estrade politique. D’un côté, Roger Waters, Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno, Elvis Costello, Lauryn Hill (The Fugees), Arcade Fire et d’autres ont annoncé qu’ils ne joueront plus en Israël tant qu’ils ne pourront en accepter la politique.

De l’autre, Nick Cave, Radiohead, Paul McCartney, Alicia Keys, parmi beaucoup, sont venus au nom du dialogue et du refus de se voir dicter leur conduite. Mais, récemment, deux chanteuses moins politisées et plus populaires parmi les adolescents ont suivi le mouvement : en décembre, Lorde, la jeune rockeuse néo-zélandaise, annulait son concert après avoir été « alertée » par une lettre ouverte signée de deux fans – l’une Juive, l’autre Palestinienne –, puis en septembre, après de nombreux appels dont celui de Roger Waters, Lana Del Rey faisait faux bond. Parce qu’elle ne pourrait pas se produire également dans les territoires palestiniens, dit-elle, elle renonçait à jouer au festival Meteor qui devait être une sorte de Coachella version kibboutznik, dans le nord d’Israël.

Un « tsunami d’annulations »

Après le refus, en avril, de l’actrice Natalie Portman de recevoir le Genesis Prize (considéré comme un « Nobel » israélien) pour exprimer son désaccord avec le gouvernement Nétanyahou et les violences commises à Gaza, après la défection de l’équipe d’Argentine de Lionel Messi qui, en juin, a annulé une rencontre amicale avec celle d’Israël à la suite de pressions internationales (de menaces, dit-on du côté israélien), le retrait de Lana Del Rey fut une autre secousse médiatique.

« Une belle surprise qui aidera peut-être les jeunes à se poser des questions sur une politique insoutenable dans les territoires occupés, mais aussi en Israël, où les Palestiniens, qui représentent 20 % de la population, sont victimes d’une cinquantaine de lois discriminatoires, à commencer par le logement et la terre », explique Kobi Snitz, chercheur en neurobiologie au Weizmann Institute et cofondateur de Boycott from Within (« boycott de l’intérieur »), qui rassemble une poignée de militants suffisamment téméraires pour affronter les torrents de haine qu’ils suscitent au sein du pouvoir, des médias et sur les réseaux sociaux.

Dans la foulée de Lana Del Rey, quatorze artistes, dont plusieurs DJ, ont décliné l’invitation du festival. Des dizaines d’autres ont exprimé leur soutien au boycott sur les réseaux sociaux. Yaron Trax commence à se faire du souci pour « la capitale du clubbing » qu’est Tel-Aviv. Idit Frenkel, qui officie souvent derrière les platines de The Block, a signé un long article dans le quotidien israélien Haaretz, pour évoquer le « tsunami d’annulations ». Le titre de la tribune était emprunté aux paroles d’une chanson de Don McLean, American Pie (1971) : « The day the music died » [« le jour où la musique est morte »].

Le boycott la laisse amère : « On peut comprendre ceux qui veulent lutter de manière non violente contre les morts de Gaza, le développement des colonies ou la décision de Trump d’installer l’ambassade des Etats-Unis à Jérusalem. Mais ne pas venir, c’est punir ceux qui essaient de changer les choses, y compris dans la minuscule scène underground qu’abhorrent les nationalistes et les religieux du gouvernement. »

Si certaines figures de l’électro, comme l’Américano-Chilien Nicolas Jaar ou les Français d’Acid Arab, viennent encore en Israël, ils ne jouent plus à Tel-Aviv mais à Haïfa, au Kabareet, tenu et animé par Jazar Crew, un collectif d’artistes palestiniens. Haïfa, la cité portuaire qui soigne sa réputation de tolérance et de coexistence entre Juifs et Arabes…

Une forme d’apartheid ?

Attablé dans un café du centre-ville, Ayez Fadel, 31 ans, l’un des fondateurs et DJ de Jazar Crew, connaît l’antienne par cœur : « Mais même ici, grandir en étant palestinien, c’est éprouver la discrimination. Les écoles publiques arabes moins dotées que les établissements juifs, les boîtes de nuit où l’on te demande ton “Hoger”, le livret militaire que tu n’as pas [la majorité des Arabes citoyens d’Israël n’effectuent pas leur service militaire], la langue… Une nouvelle loi fait de l’hébreu la seule langue officielle, elle dit aussi que le pays est “l’Etat-nation du peuple juif”, alors que je suis un Palestinien vivant ici par la force de l’histoire, que mes impôts servent à protéger les colonies juives et à financer une armée qui a tué 44 enfants palestiniens ces trois derniers mois… Parler d’apartheid ne me paraît pas exagéré. »

Ayez Fadel comprend le boycott et revendique la dimension politique de Jazar Crew : « Une manière de sensibiliser les jeunes. Nous n’avons plus honte d’être palestiniens, nous sommes éduqués et confiants. Et nous ne cessons de répéter que nos positions ne sont pas contre les Juifs mais contre ce régime. » Le jeune homme se dit prêt à collaborer avec Yaron Trax, qui l’a appelé pour que The Block et Kabareet « organisent quelque chose ensemble ». Mais, précise-t-il, « à condition qu’il fasse une déclaration claire sur l’occupation des territoires et les droits des Palestiniens ».

Les turbulences qui agitent le microcosme underground reflètent assez bien le désarroi du monde de la culture devant ces appels au boycott. « En ce moment, pas un dîner sans qu’on en parle », reconnaît la responsable d’une galerie d’art installée aux franges de Florentine, ancien quartier d’entrepôts et d’ateliers de Tel-Aviv devenu le préféré des artistes et des bobos. Comme beaucoup d’opposants à l’occupation, elle refuse d’acheter les produits des colonies – certaines se sont spécialisées dans l’agriculture et l’élevage bio – ou le vin venu du Golan. « Mais le BDS culturel, dit-elle, frappe ce qui reste de l’élite de gauche, celle que Nétanyahou et son gouvernement détestent. Si on la muselle, on n’entendra plus que les voix des plus réactionnaires… »

C’est aussi ce que pense Avi Pitchon, écrivain, critique et commissaire d’expositions : « Le boycott culturel réduit le débat à une polarisation extrême entre les activistes et le gouvernement, il déshumanise et nourrit la paranoïa, ce “nous” contre “eux” dont joue un régime de moins en moins démocratique. Ce tout ou rien est un piège, quoi que disent les créateurs ils seront perdants. Alors, ils préfèrent laisser parler leur art… »

C’est peut-être pour cela que chercher à les rencontrer pour évoquer la question relève de la chasse au dahu. Groupe pop connu pour ses textes radicaux, écrivain loué comme l’une des « grandes voix morales » du pays, cinéastes, producteurs de concerts, responsables de théâtre, de centre d’art contemporain… tous se disent trop occupés. D’autres se ravisent après avoir parlé et demandent à n’être plus cités.

Pnina Blayer, la directrice artistique du Festival international du film de Haïfa qui s’est déroulé fin septembre sans les « grands noms » invités, exige les questions par courriel et adresse des réponses aussi sèches que le fleuve Jourdain surexploité : selon elle, la situation dans la bande Gaza et la guerre en Syrie sont les motifs des absences, dont aucune n’a été motivée par le BDS, qui n’aura découragé qu’un film marocain, et si Agnès Varda, à qui le festival rendait hommage, n’est pas venue, ce n’est pas pour des raisons politiques.

Il faut comprendre sa prudence : pendant que le festival est soumis aux pressions de l’étranger, sa propre ministre de la culture, la très droitière Miri Regev, demande à celui des finances de lui couper les vivres pour avoir accueilli deux films israéliens qui « sapent les valeurs et symboles » de l’Etat (l’un d’eux raconte l’histoire d’un metteur en scène palestinien qui monte une pièce narrant un amour entre une Juive et un Arabe…).

Le projet de loi « Loyauté dans la culture »

La même ministre se démène pour l’adoption d’un projet de loi « Loyauté dans la culture » qui veut supprimer les fonds à toute organisation déniant « Israël comme un Etat juif et démocratique » ou qui ferait du jour de l’indépendance celui de la Nakba, la « catastrophe » que vécurent 700 000 Palestiniens expulsés en 1948.

Le monde de la culture a manifesté le 27 octobre contre ce texte, de nombreux cinéastes israéliens, comme Amos Gitaï ou Ari Folman, sont parmi les signataires d’une tribune parue lundi 12 novembre dans Le Monde pour demander le retrait du texte. En attendant, des députés ont également proposé de punir de sept ans de prison tout appel au boycott et l’entrée du pays est déjà interdite à tout étranger qui soutient activement le BDS.

Car, pour le gouvernement, c’est la guerre. Au vingt-neuvième étage d’une tour de Bnei Brak, dans la banlieue de Tel-Aviv, une trentaine de personnes travaillent au sein de la National Task Force for Countering Delegitimization (« force d’intervention contre la délégitimisation »), qui dépend du ministère des affaires étrangères.

« Nous révélons les relations entre le BDS et des organisations terroristes comme le Hamas ou le Front populaire de libération de la Palestine ; comment, sous couvert de droits de l’homme, il s’attaque à la légitimité d’Israël ; comment il bombarde les artistes par des cyberattaques menées par des robots. Nous travaillons avec des centaines d’organisations pro-israéliennes en leur offrant articles, vidéos et autres outils pour affronter les arguments du BDS », résume Tzahi Gavrieli, le directeur.

Le bureau a lancé la plate-forme 4il sur Internet, Facebook et Twitter : des images de jolies filles montrent la diversité du pays, des vidéos soulignent la réussite de certains « Arabes israéliens ». Des posts saluent la criminalisation du boycott en France (en 2015, la justice a confirmé la condamnation de militants ayant appelé au boycott des produits israéliens) ou en Allemagne (le BDS a été jugé antisémite par l’Office fédéral de la protection de la constitution de Berlin).

Un post du 23 octobre relaie le rapport de Human Rights Watch sur la torture pratiquée par le Hamas et l’Autorité palestinienne en demandant si la communauté internationale va exercer sur eux les mêmes pressions que sur Israël… Des messages vantent le concours Eurovision de la chanson de mai prochain : avec ses 186 millions de téléspectateurs, la manifestation est une vitrine que le gouvernement ne veut pas voir entachée, malgré l’appel au boycott lancé par 140 artistes internationaux.

L’« instrumentalisation » du monde de la culture ?

La lutte contre le BDS est aussi l’affaire d’Adam Shay au sein du Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, un think tank niché dans un quartier tranquille de la ville sainte. Il « scrute » les militants locaux, conseille les promoteurs de spectacles, essaie de convaincre des artistes ciblés que ce qu’on leur raconte est un tissu de mensonges et qu’ils ne regretteront pas de venir.

« David Guetta était là la semaine dernière », se réjouit le jeune homme avant de confier qu’il cherchait à faire venir Rachid Taha, peu avant sa mort, en septembre : « Cela aurait été un gros truc » (vu les relations qui liaient le rockeur français à Brian Eno, très impliqué dans le BDS, on imagine mal une réponse positive).

C’est cette « instrumentalisation » du monde de la culture qui, aux yeux des militants du BDS, justifie les appels au boycott de ceux dont les travaux ou les voyages sont financés par le gouvernement. Ils aident, disent-ils, le pays à soigner son image de démocratie favorable à la liberté d’expression. Les artistes se retrouvent coincés entre le marteau du gouvernement, qui tient (et serre) les cordons de la bourse, et l’enclume des pressions internationales.

« À l’étranger, nous sommes considérés par certains comme des collaborateurs ; ici, comme des traîtres. Mais l’argent du ministère est aussi celui de mes impôts. Si la solution est de dire non, où va-t-il aller et qui va dire ce que l’on dit ? », demande Hillel Kogan, danseur et chorégraphe de la célèbre compagnie Batsheva, qui dut affronter cet été quelques militants pro-BDS à Montpellier et à Toulouse alors que, invité de la très diplomatique saison « France-Israël », il s’apprêtait, avec le Palestinien d’Israël Adi Boutros, à interpréter sa pièce We Love Arabs.

Certains dans le pays ont regretté que l’écrivain David Grossman, considéré comme une « conscience » par le camp de la paix, se laisse « enrôler » par le pouvoir en acceptant le prix Israël de littérature 2018 des mains du ministre de l’éducation ou, en 2017, lorsqu’il accompagne à New York une pièce tirée de l’un de ses romans et adaptée par deux troupes israéliennes qui s’étaient produites dans les colonies (ce que l’auteur désapprouve). Ce, sous les yeux de la ministre de la culture qui avait fait le voyage. « Une manière de résister au BDS qui est une nouvelle forme d’antisémitisme », avait dit Miri Regev ce jour-là.

Car c’est l’argument massue des contempteurs du BDS. Le mouvement a beau condamner racisme et antisémitisme, le public hétéroclite qu’il mobilise laisse parfois suinter des attaques haineuses, voire négationnistes. Dans le petit théâtre de Jérusalem où il travaille avec de jeunes comédiens juifs et arabes, Arik Eshet se souvient du festival de théâtre d’Édimbourg de 2014, lorsque des militants « agressifs » avaient fait annuler son spectacle : « Tu entends des gens crier qu’Israël ne devrait pas exister. C’est traumatisant… »

La nécessaire mobilisation de la société civile

Roger Waters est systématiquement accusé d’infamie. Du coup, Gideon Levy, le journaliste de Haaretz qui se démène inlassablement pour évoquer le sort des Palestiniens, ne cesse de défendre le chanteur. « J’ai passé de longues nuits à discuter avec lui, rien ne lui est plus étranger que les sentiments antisémites, ces accusations sont intolérables », assène-t-il dans le salon de sa maison, dont un mur est orné d’une vieille publicité ensoleillée où est inscrit : « Visit Palestine ».

Un BDS efficace, ajoute-t-il, serait le seul moyen d’en finir avec les bains de sang : « Le changement ne viendra pas de l’intérieur d’Israël, la vie est trop bonne ici. Or les Etats-Unis soutiennent le pays et l’Europe est une plaisanterie : le seul espoir est la mobilisation de la société civile. La gauche sioniste appelle depuis des lustres à deux Etats mais n’a rien fait pour ça, nous devons en payer le prix. La criminalisation du BDS est un scandale : pourquoi serait-il légitime de boycotter l’Iran et pas Israël ? »

En les réduisant au rang de producteurs de « biens culturels » ou d’instruments du soft power d’un Etat dont ils n’approuvent pas la politique, le BDS interroge les artistes de manière inconfortable sur leurs responsabilités de créateurs et de citoyens au cœur d’une opinion publique au mieux indifférente, au pis de plus en plus xénophobe. Et dans les conversations un nom revient souvent, comme s’ils étaient orphelins d’une figure capable d’indignation, de « courage », disent certains.

« Il nous manque un penseur comme Leibowitz », glisse le photographe Miki Kratsman, l’un des fondateurs de l’ONG Breaking the Silence qui recueille les témoignages des soldats sur les exactions auxquelles les contraint l’occupation. C’est aussi ce que dit Zeev Tene, un vieux rockeur dont Ari Folman utilisa une chanson pour son film Valse avec Bachir et qui, depuis deux ans, part, le 6 juin, date anniversaire de la guerre des Six-Jours, le long du mur de séparation avec quelques musiciens et un camion en guise d’estrade pour jouer devant une banderole qui proclame « Make Israel small again ».

Yeshayahu Leibowitz, mort en 1994, grand penseur et moraliste, religieux convaincu et sioniste affirmé, fut un critique féroce de l’occupation qui « détruit la moralité du conquérant ». Outré par la torture, il alla jusqu’à employer le terme de « judéo-nazis »… Or, constate l’historien « post-sioniste » Shlomo Sand, qui fait lui aussi référence à Leibowitz, « je n’ai pas vu l’Université se mettre en grève lorsqu’une succursale a été ouverte dans la colonie d’Ariel. Je n’ai entendu aucune de nos voix de la gauche sioniste prôner l’objection de conscience dans les territoires ou soutenir les refuzniks [qui refusent de servir dans l’armée]. Le BDS les met devant leurs contradictions… »

Mais le malaise, explique-t-il, vient aussi du fait que, « en posant le droit au retour des réfugiés, le BDS questionne les conditions mêmes de la naissance d’Israël dans un pays encore hanté par la Shoah. Ce droit au retour ne peut être ignoré, mais il faut être honnête : on ne pourra pas accueillir 5 millions de réfugiés. Je soutiens le BDS à condition qu’il ne mette pas en danger l’existence d’Israël. »

Une situation parfois absurde

L’historien déplore aussi la « stupidité » de certains appels au boycott culturel. Les musiciens d’Apo and the Apostles, un Arménien de Jérusalem et trois Palestiniens de Bethléem, partagent sûrement son avis. Lorsque ces talentueux garçons qui mêlent leur folk-rock à des nuances orientales doivent se produire dans un festival de musique alternative arabe à Tel-Aviv, le BDS décrète que ce n’est pas acceptable parce qu’ils ne sont pas des « Palestiniens de 48 », ceux restés en Israël…

Shady Srour aussi a quelques remarques à faire sur les censeurs du BDS : cinéaste palestinien de Nazareth, il a tourné un très joli film dans sa ville natale, Holy Air, où comment un homme essaie de s’en sortir en vendant de l’« air saint » aux touristes venus sur les traces de Jésus. C’est drôle, féministe, sexy, acide, « beckettien », plus grave lorsque les rêves sont empêchés par le seul fait de n’être pas un citoyen comme les autres.

Mais le BDS ne rit pas : il a demandé son retrait d’un festival du film israélien à Londres, puis du Festival des cinémas arabes de l’Institut du monde arabe, à Paris, qui a congédié le réalisateur d’un bref courrier. « Je suis palestinien, mon père fut l’un de ceux chassés vers le Liban. Me boycotter, c’est m’empêcher d’affirmer mon propre récit face à celui des Israéliens. Le BDS vient chez moi pour me couper la langue… Aucun financement arabe ne m’est accordé parce que j’ai un passeport israélien, où est-ce que je trouve l’argent ? » On comprend que son film soit teinté de tristesse et d’absurde.

#Palestine #Culture #Apartheid #BDS #Boycott_culturel

Detainees Evacuated out of Libya but Resettlement Capacity Remains Inadequate

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (#UNHCR) 262 migrants detained in Libya were evacuated to Niger on November 12- the largest evacuation from Libya carried out to date. In addition to a successful airlift of 135 people in October this year, this brings the total number of people evacuated to more than 2000 since December 2017. However Amnesty International describes the resettlement process from Niger as slow and the number of pledges inadequate.

The evacuations in October and November were the first since June when the Emergency Transit Mechanism (ETM) centre in Niger reached its full capacity of 1,536 people, which according to Amnesty was a result of a large number of people “still waiting for their permanent resettlement to a third country.”

57,483 refugees and asylum seekers are registered by UNHCR in Libya; as of October 2018 14,349 had agreed to Voluntary Humanitarian Return. Currently 3,886 resettlement pledges have been made by 12 states, but only 1,140 have been resettled.

14,595 people have been intercepted by the Libyan coast guard and taken back to Libya, however it has been well documented that their return is being met by detention, abuse, violence and torture. UNHCR recently declared Libya unsafe for returns amid increased violence in the capital, while Amnesty International has said that “thousands of men, women and children are trapped in Libya facing horrific abuses with no way out”.

In this context, refugees and migrants are currently refusing to disembark in Misrata after being rescued by a cargo ship on November 12, reportedly saying “they would rather die than be returned to land”. Reuters cited one Sudanese teenager on board who stated “We agree to go to any place but not Libya.”

UNHCR estimates that 5,413 refugees and migrants remain detained in #Directorate_for_Combatting_Illegal_Migration (#DCIM) centres and the UN Refugee Agency have repetedly called for additional resettlement opportunities for vulnerable persons of concern in Libya.

▻https://www.ecre.org/detainees-evacuated-out-of-libya-but-resettlement-capacity-remains-inadequate
#réinstallation #Niger #Libye #évacuation #asile #migrations #réfugiés #HCR #détention #centres_de_détention #Emergency_Transit_Mechanism (#ETM)

Airbnb to remove listings in Jewish West Bank settlements
Noa Landau, Yotam Berger, Jack Khoury and Reuters Nov 19, 2018 6:11 PM
►https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/airbnb-to-remove-listings-in-jewish-west-bank-settlements-1.6662443

Home-renting company Airbnb Inc said on Monday that it had decided to remove its listings in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, enclaves that most world powers consider illegal for taking up land where Palestinians seek statehood. In response, Israel’s Tourism Minister Yariv Levin instructed the ministry to restrict the company’s operations across the country.

A statement on Airbnb’s website said: “We concluded that we should remove listings in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank that are at the core of the dispute between Israelis and Palestinians.”

It did not say when the decision, which according to Airbnb affects some 200 listings, would take effect. (...)

#BDS

Syrian refugee children enjoy a new start at school – in pictures

Thousands of Syrians who have missed out on years of vital learning are being helped back into education in Lebanon and Jordan

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/267dcbacce5048e1d307c760ed98b4f41a2099e2/0_0_5472_3648/master/5472.jpg?width=880&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=c01259ba0c498c6e1d10f5b00f2c2176#.jpg https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/9be49245779c2089382aa9f15eebc8286c274475/0_0_5370_3580/master/5370.jpg?width=880&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=d6ae3745343c91e51421e80699756296#.jpg

v. aussi le #rapport de Human Rights Watch sur la non #scolarisation des enfants réfugiés syriens :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/510474

Why is Canada denying its indigenous peoples clean water? - The Globe and Mail
▻https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/why-is-canada-denying-its-indigenous-peoples-clean-water/article31599791

Amanda Klasing, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, specializes in the right to clean water.

“She likes to take a bath, but [the water] irritates her skin,” Susan said of her active two-year-old daughter. When the little girl was 18 months old, Susan started to notice rashes all over her daughter’s legs. “I thought it was something from the grass,” she said. Instead, a doctor informed her that the baby’s rash was probably from her water. Susan can’t bathe her daughter at home now; she takes her to a daycare centre or relative’s house.

Susan lives in Grassy Narrows First Nation in Ontario, where I spoke to her and other families in February to learn about living under a “do not consume” water advisory.

#canada #eau #premières_nations

#Pakistan: Girls Deprived of Education. Barriers Include Underinvestment, Fees, Discrimination

The Pakistan government is failing to educate a huge proportion of the country’s girls, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The 111-page report, “‘Shall I Feed My Daughter, or Educate Her?’: Barriers to Girls’ Education in Pakistan,” concludes that many girls simply have no access to education, including because of a shortage of government schools – especially for girls. Nearly 22.5 million of Pakistan’s children – in a country with a population of just over 200 million – are out of school, the majority of them girls. Thirty-two percent of primary school age girls are out of school in Pakistan, compared with 21 percent of boys. By ninth grade, only 13 percent of girls are still in school.

▻https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/11/12/pakistan-girls-deprived-education
#éducation #genre #filles #femmes #discriminations #inégalités #rapport #école

Tunisia: Privacy Threatened by ‘Homosexuality’ Arrests

Tunisian authorities are confiscating and searching the phones of men they suspect of being gay and pressuring them to take anal tests and to confess to homosexual activity, Human Rights Watch said today. Prosecutors then use information collected in this fashion to prosecute them for homosexual acts between consenting partners, under the country’s harsh sodomy laws.

“The Tunisian authorities have no business meddling in people’s private sexual practices, brutalizing and humiliating them under the guise of enforcing discriminatory laws,” said Amna Guellali, Tunisia director at Human Rights Watch. “Tunisia should abolish its antiquated anti-sodomy laws and respect everyone’s right to privacy.”

Human Rights Watch spoke with six men prosecuted in 2017 and 2018 under article 230 of the penal code, which punishes consensual same-sex conduct with up to three years in prison. One person interviewed was only 17 years old the first time he was arrested. Human Rights Watch also reviewed the judicial files in these cases and five others that resulted in prosecutions under either article 230 or article 226, which criminalizes “harming public morals.” In addition to violating privacy rights, these cases included allegations of mistreatment in police custody, forced confessions, and denial of access to legal counsel.

Police arrested some of these men after disputes arose between them or after neighbors reported them. Two had gone to the police to report being raped.

Some of the men spent months in prison. At least three have left Tunisia and applied for asylum in European countries.

K.S., a 32-year-old engineer, entered a police station in Monastir in June 2018 to file a complaint of gang rape, and to get an order for a medical examination of his injuries. Instead of treating him as a victim, he said, the police ordered an anal test to determine whether K.S. was “used to practicing sodomy.” “How they treated me was insane,” K.S. told Human Rights Watch. “How is it their business to intrude into my intimate parts and check whether I am ‘used to sodomy’?”

In another case, a 17-year-old was arrested three times on sodomy charges and was forced to undergo an anal examination, as well as months of conversion therapy at a juvenile detention center. Both harmful practices are discredited.

Tunisian prosecutors have relied extensively in recent years on forced anal examinations to seek “evidence” of sodomy, even though the exams are highly unreliable and constitute cruel, degrading, and inhuman treatment that can rise to the level of torture.

On September 21, 2017, during the Universal Periodic Review at the United Nations Human Rights Council, Tunisia formally accepted a recommendation to end forced anal exams. However, Tunisia’s delegation stated: “Medical examinations will be conducted based on the consent of the person and in the presence of a medical expert.” This stance is not credible because trial courts can presume that a refusal to undergo the exam signals guilt, Human Rights Watch said. Tunisia should abandon anal exams altogether.

Prosecutions for consensual sex in private and between adults violate the rights to privacy and nondiscrimination guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Tunisia is a party. The United Nations Human Rights Committee, which monitors compliance with the covenant, has stated that sexual orientation is a status protected against discrimination. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has found that arrests for same-sex conduct between consenting adults are, by definition, arbitrary.

Tunisia’s 2014 constitution, in article 24, obliges the government to protect the rights to privacy and the inviolability of the home. Article 21 provides that “All citizens, male and female, have equal rights and duties, and are equal before the law without any discrimination.” Article 23 prohibits “mental and physical torture.”

The Code of Criminal Procedure prohibits house searches and seizure of objects that could serve a criminal investigation without a judicial warrant, except in cases of flagrante delicto, that is when catching someone in the act.

Article 1 of Law No. 63 on the protection of personal data stipulates that “every person is entitled to the protection of their personal data and privacy of information, viewed as a fundamental right guaranteed by the constitution. This data can only be used with transparency, loyalty and respect for the dignity of the person whose data is subject of treatment.” However, neither Law No. 63 nor any other domestic law regulates the conditions for seizing private data during a police investigation or its use.

On June 12, the Commission on Individual Freedoms and Equality, appointed by President Beji Caid Essebsi, proposed, among other actions, to decriminalize homosexuality and to end anal testing in criminal investigations into homosexuality. It also proposed criminalizing the unlawful “interception, opening, recording, spreading, saving and deleting” of an electronic message.

On October 11, 13 members of the Tunisian Parliament introduced draft legislation for a code on individual freedoms. It incorporated several proposals from the presidential commission including abolition of article 230.

Parliament should move quickly on this draft legislation and abolish article 230, Human Rights Watch said. It should enact a law that effectively protects people’s privacy, through regulating the seizure and use of private data during criminal investigations, with consequences if such a law is violated.

The Justice Ministry should meanwhile direct public prosecutors to abandon prosecutions under article 230. The Interior Ministry should investigate reports of the ill-treatment of people arrested based on their gender identity or sexual orientation.

Human Rights Watch conducted face to face interviews with men in Tunisia and phone interviews with men who fled to European countries. Pseudonyms have been used to protect their privacy.

Shams and Damj, local LGBT rights groups, provided assistance.

Accounts by Men Prosecuted

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K.S., 32, engineer

K.S. used to work for an international company in Tunis. He said that on June 8, he went to spend the weekend in at a friend’s house in Monastir, a coastal city. He had earlier chatted with a man from Monastir on Grindr, a social network application for gays. They made a date and they met that day in a café. The man invited K.S. to his house, but once there, the man became aggressive and showed K.S. a police badge. Two other men arrived, and they started insulting him, calling him “sick.” “One said, ‘You people of Loth [a demeaning term derived from the Biblical and Quranic story of Lot], you deserve to be killed, you are like microbes.’”

They punched and slapped him on the face, he said. Then the man who had invited him said, “We will show you what sodomy is like.” The men then forced him to take off his clothes and bend over. Two of them held K.S. by the arms while the third inserted a baton in his anus. “It was unbearable, I felt that I will faint,” K.S. said. They finally let him leave.

I was shivering and bleeding [when I reached my friend’s house]. The next day, I went to Fattouma Bourguiba hospital in Monastir. I just wanted to get medical treatment and to check that I did not have internal hemorrhaging.

But, he said, the doctor refused to examine him without a police order:

I went to the Skanes district police station in Monastir, to try to get the requisition order. I did not want to tell the police the full story, so I just said that three men had raped me. The policeman who was typing my statement left the room at some point, and that’s when I saw on the screen that he was instructing the doctor at Fatouma Bourguiba hospital to examine whether I am ‘used to practicing sodomy.’ I felt the blood freeze in my body.

Human Rights Watch reviewed the June 9 police requisition order, in which the chief instructs the doctor to examine whether K.S. was “used to practicing sodomy” and whether he was victim of anal rape.

K.S. said that, when the policeman returned to the office, K.S. asked if he could leave. The policeman replied: “And go where? You can’t leave before we check what kind of stuff you do.” The policeman called for a patrol car to drive K.S. to the hospital.

The doctor told me that he has a requisition order to perform an anal test. “We want to check whether this is a habit,” he said. I was terrified. I told him that I didn’t want to do the test. But he insisted that he had to perform it. He told me to remove my pants and assume a prayer position [on hand and knees] on top of the medical bed. He put on gloves and started to examine me with his fingers. As soon as he did, I felt sick and told him I wanted to go to the toilet. I wanted to stop this humiliation. He let me go. I managed to avoid the policemen who were waiting for me in the corridor and left the hospital. Once in the parking lot, I started running until I felt safe, and then went to my friend’s house.

K.S. said he took a flight on June 13 to Belgium, where he has filed a request for asylum.

K. B., 41, documentary filmmaker

K.B. spent 13 months in pretrial detention on accusation of sodomy and unlawful detention. He is married and the father of an 8-year-old girl. He told Human Rights Watch that on March 3, 2017, at around 9 p.m., he went to downtown Tunis for drinks. While he was sitting in a bar, S.Z., a young man, approached him. They chatted for a while, then K.B. invited him to his place. He said that, after having sex, he went to the kitchen to prepare some food. When he came back to the living room, he caught the man stealing money from his wallet. K.B. tried to force him out of his apartment, but the man locked himself in a bedroom, went to the balcony, and screamed for help. Policemen arrived, arrested them, and took them to the Aouina district police station.

Police treated me with contempt. The first question the interrogator asked was whether I had sex with S.Z. I denied it categorically and told him we only had drinks together. But he said that S.Z. had confessed. The interrogator asked me: “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
K.B. said the police at the station confiscated his phone and looked at his social media history and his photo archives. They switched the phone off and did not allow him to call his family or a lawyer. They presented him with a statement to sign, but he refused. At 4 a.m., they transferred both men to Bouchoucha detention center. Later that morning, the police took the men to the Tunis first instance court, where a prosecutor ordered them to undergo an anal test. The police took them to Charles Nicole hospital, K.B. said, where he refused the test. “The idea of them intruding into my intimacy and into my body was so humiliating to me.”

He was returned to detention and after a few weeks decided to undergo the test in the hope that negative results would prove his innocence. He said he informed the investigative judge during a hearing and the judge issued a requisition. Police officers took him again to Charles Nicole Hospital.

It was the worst thing that ever happened to me. The doctor asked me to strip and get on the examination table. He asked me to bend over. There was one policeman in the room and one medical assistant, watching. The doctor put one finger into my anus and moved it around. I was so ashamed. It was very dehumanizing.

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K.B. said that even though the test result was negative, the investigative judge indicted him for sodomy. The order referring the case to trial said that the time elapsed between the alleged act and the test prevented the court from ruling out that K.B. was “used to the practice of sodomy.”

In May 2018, 13 months after the court placed K.B. in pretrial detention, it acquitted and freed him.

In the indictment, the investigative judge wrote that S.Z. had confessed to the police to “committing the crime of sodomy in exchange for money” and that he admitted that he “approached and dated men he met via Facebook.” The judge quotes the police report, which describes in crude terms the sexual intercourse between K.B. and S.Z. The judge also states that K.B has denied the accusation of sodomy, and instead stated that he and S.Z. were only having drinks at his place and did not have sex.

The investigative judge notes that S.Z. later retracted his confession and says that he gave instructions for the forensic doctor in the Charles Nicole Hospital to administer an anal test to determine whether K.B “bore signs of the practice of homosexual activity” recently or whether he “practices sodomy in a habitual way.”

The judge’s indictment of K. B. was based on S.Z.’s confession to the police, later repudiated, from “the circumstances of the case, which show that the two men had no other reason to go to K. B.’s house” and K. B.’s refusal to take the anal test. The judge wrote: “given that the test was performed 20 days after the reported incident, the forensic doctor was not able to find signs of anal penetration because those signs disappear five days after the act.”

“Free” (nickname), 32, hairdresser

Free said that on the night of April 5, 2018, he went with a female friend from Sousse to Monastir for drinks and to meet his boyfriend. When they arrived at around 9 p.m., he said, a police patrol stopped them and asked for their papers, then told the woman to accompany them to the station for further identity checks. Free waited outside the station.

While waiting, Free received an angry message from his boyfriend asking him why he was late. Free explained where he was and snapped a photo of the station as proof. A police officer saw him and confiscated Free’s telephone, saying he had endangered state security. The officer took him to an interrogation room, where another officer handcuffed him to a chair. An officer searched the phone and finding nude photos of Free, then searched his social media activity and read the conversations he had with men on gay dating apps and his chats with his boyfriend on Facebook Messenger, some of them sexually explicit.

Free said that the police officer turned to him and said, “I hate you, you sodomites. You will have to pay for your depravity.” Other police officers in the room insulted Free, he said. The officer interrogated him about his sexual activity, wrote a report, and told him to sign it. When Free refused, a policeman slapped him in the face and said, “Ah, now you are trying to be a man. Just sign here, you scum.” Free signed the report without reading it.

At no point during the interrogation did the police advise Free of his right to speak to a lawyer. At around midnight, they moved him into a cell, where he spent the night. The following day, he was taken before a prosecutor, who charged him with sodomy but decided to release him provisionally pending trial. On June 6, he appeared before the first instance court in Monastir. The presiding judge closed the courtroom to the public.

The first question he asked me was whether I am used to the practice of sodomy. I told him I was not. He asked the question again, then asked, “Then why did you confess?” I answered, “Because the police forced me to.” The judge asked, “But if you are not a sodomite, why do you dress like this, why do you look like one of them?”

He said the judge adjourned the trial to June 14, when he convicted Free and sentenced him to a four-months sentence with probation, based on his phone conversations and his forced confession. Free has appealed.

M. R., 26, paramedic

M.R. worked in a hospital in Tebourba, a city 40 kilometers west of Tunis. He fled to France and applied for asylum after being charged under article 230 and granted pretrial release.

M.R. said he had always hidden his sexual orientation because of severe social stigma. In November 2017, he chatted with a man on Facebook. The man, called A.F., sent him photos, and they decided to meet. When they did, M.R. realized that the photos were fake and told A.F. that he would not have sex with him. A few days later, on November 28, A.F. banged on his door at around 4 a.m. Fearing scandal, M.R. opened the door to find A.F. drunk and wielding a knife. A.F. slapped him on the face, ordered him to remove his clothes, and raped him, he said, threatening to cut his throat. After a few hours, A.F. told M.R. to buy A.F. cigarettes. M.R. went to the Tebourba police station and filed a rape complaint.

When I told the police officers about the rape, they asked me how I knew the man and how we met. I dodged the questions, but they insisted. I told them that I am gay, and their behavior changed instantly. The station chief said: “Ah, so you were the one who initiated this, you are an accomplice to the crime, there is no rape here – you deserve this.” Then, he handed me a requisition order and told me to go get an anal test the following day at Charles Nicole Hospital.

The police interrogated M.R., then accompanied him to his apartment, where they arrested A.F. The police told M.R. to undergo the anal examination, then report to the First Instance Court in Manouba. M.R. consulted the nongovernmental association Shams, which defends sexual minorities, and decided to skip the anal test. When he reported to the court, the investigative judge treated him as a criminal, not a victim. M.R. said:

He asked questions about my sex life and when I started practicing sodomy with other men. He said that I deserved everything that had happened to me and that I should be ashamed of myself.

M.R. said that the judge charged him with sodomy and granted him pretrial release. A.F. was kept in custody and charged with sodomy and rape.

The indictment of M.R., prepared by the investigative judge and dated December 13, 2017, provides purported details from M.R.’s intimate life, including confessions that he is gay. The indictment also relies on the confession from A.F. and cites a condom seized at M. R.’s house as evidence.

M.R. said that, three days after the encounter with A.F., he reported to work at the hospital. The director handed him a dismissal notice on the grounds that he was facing trial.

I had to go back to my family’s place, as I had no salary anymore. It was like living in a prison. My father and older brother beat me many times, my father even burned me with a cigarette. They did not allow me to go out, they said they were ashamed of me.

Having lost everything, he left Tunisia for France.

I had no other choice, I felt rejected by everyone, my family, society, my colleagues. And I was afraid of going to prison.

Mounir Baatour, M.R.’s lawyer, told Human Rights Watch that the case is stalled in the first instance court in Manouba, and has yet to go to trial. On May 15, 2018, indictment chamber sent the indictment to the cassation court for a legal review, which is pending.

R. F., 42, day laborer, and M.J. 22, unemployed

On June 12, 2018, police in Sidi Bouzaiane arrested R.F. and M.J. after R.F. went to the police to say that M.J. had refused to leave R.F.’s house.

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M.J. said that the police came to his house and took both men to the police station at around midnight. They interrogated them in the same room, asking them how they met. A police officer took R.F.’s phone and watched videos stored on it, then said to R.F., “So you are a miboun [a degrading term for gay]. M.J. said:

One of the four officers present during interrogation slapped R.F. on the face. Then he turned toward me and asked, “So what were you both doing in the house? I’m sure you were having sex, so you too must be a miboun. You are staining this country,” he said.

M.J. said that policemen beat him on his face, head, and back. When the police finished the interrogation at 3 a.m., they presented a written report and told M.J. to sign it. He said he asked to have a lawyer first, but they refused to let him call one and insulted him. He signed the report.

The police report, reviewed by Human Rights Watch, states that neither man requested a lawyer. R.F.’s purported statement, as the police recorded it, describes in graphic terms how he habitually practices sodomy and has sex with men. The police report states that officers searched R.F.’s smartphone and found videos of R.F. having sex with men. The police confiscated his phone, the report says, as “evidence of the crime.”

Two days after the arrest, M.J. said, he and R.F. appeared before a prosecutor, who asked them: “Aren’t you afraid of God’s judgment?” He ordered pretrial detention, and they were sent to the Sidi Bouzid prison. M.J. said that one of the prison guards harassed him and asked him vulgar questions such as: “How you do this? Are you getting fucked for money? Why are you fucking men? Aren’t there enough women to fuck in this country?”

He said he was put in a cell with 100 other men, who seemed to have been informed about his “crime.” Over the following days, his cellmates insulted, beat, and sexually harassed him. He said that one night, he refused to have sex with the cell “strongman”, so the man and two others beat him. He said they held his arms, while the strongman slapped him on the face and punched him on the chin.

After a week in detention, he appeared before an investigative judge, who asked him about his sexual behavior. M.J. said he admitted that he is gay. He said he had done nothing wrong, but the judge replied, “You are harming society.”

The first instance court in Sidi Bouzid sentenced the two men on June 12 to three months in prison for sodomy. The appeals court upheld the sentence.

S.C., 24 and A.B., 22

Police arrested S.C. and A.B. in Sousse on December 8, 2016, when they were allegedly caught committing sodomy in public. They were sentenced, on March 10, 2017, to eight months in prison under article 230 of the penal code and not on charges related to public indecency. The police report describes their sexual intercourse in detail and concludes that S.C. “committed active sodomy,” while A.B. was a “passive sodomite.”

The judgment from the first instance court in Sousse, which Human Rights Watch reviewed, states that both denied committing sodomy or being homosexuals. It states that they were both subjected to anal examinations on December 9, 2016, that turned out “negative.” The judge concluded that: “the results of the anal tests cannot exonerate the accused of the crime, especially given that the [tests] were performed sometime after the facts.” The court based the guilty verdict only on the declarations by police officers and wrote that: “it is appropriate to sentence them to eight months as an adequate and dissuasive sentence proportional to the offense that they have committed.”

A.C., 18, student

A.C. was arrested three times for sodomy. The first time was in August 2017, when he was 17. Police forces arrested him at his house after his two sisters denounced him as gay and took him to the Kasba police station in Tunis. He said that they interrogated him extensively about his sexual orientation and took his smart phone and searched his personal data. The next day, they took him to a forensic doctor in the Charles Nicole hospital for an anal examination. He said he did not have a lawyer and that the police did not inform him of his right to have one.

I did not understand what was going on. The police told me that the test is mandatory. The doctor told me to go on an examination bed and to bend, and then he inserted his fingers in my insides. The doctor did not explain what the test is about.

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A.C. said he was released without charge after spending two days in the Kasba police station.

On May 15, 2018, he went to the police station in Sijoumi, in Tunis, in response to a summons. He said police officers told him his family had filed a complaint and questioned him for almost four hours. A.C. confessed to being gay. The police took him to Bouchoucha detention center in Tunis, where he spent the night. The next day, May 16, he appeared before the Tunis first instance court in Sidi Hassine, where an investigative judge interviewed him. The judge asked him: “Why are you like this? Don’t you know that what you’re doing is haram [forbidden under Islam]?”

I told the judge that I didn’t break any laws, that what I do is my personal business. I did not hurt anyone. This is my private life and should not be the concern of anyone else.

He said the judge ordered his detention for two months in a juvenile rehabilitation center, as he was still a minor, and forced him to undergo “conversion therapy,” a thoroughly discredited method to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. At the center, a psychiatrist visited him twice, telling him that “he should work on changing himself and his mind.” He appeared before another investigative judge, on June 25, who released him.

A.C. said that on September 2, he was running some errands with his boyfriend when the police stopped them and asked for their identity cards. The police told A.C. that his family had filed a complaint against him. They took him to Hay Hlel police station in Tunis, where they questioned him about his sexual life, confiscated his phone, and looked at his photos and personal conversations. A prosecutor issued a warrant to detain him, and he spent eight days in the Bouchoucha detention center. On September 20, he appeared before a judge, who released him without charge.

F.B, 28; N.A, 21 and B.K., 27, day laborers

In Sousse, a coastal city, the police arrested three men in January 2017, after neighbors complained that they suspected the men were gay. In the indictment, which Human Rights Watch reviewed, the investigative judge states that the police went to the house where the men were staying, seized their phones, on which they found “evidence that they were sodomites,” as well as “women’s clothing,” and took the men to the police station.

The investigative judge ruled that the men harmed public morals based on the content of the seized phones and “because they dressed up like women, used lipstick, and talked in a languid way.” The police report and the indictment, which usually would include information about a judicial warrant, did not indicate that the police had one. The three men were sentenced to two months in prison for the charge of harming public morals and served their terms.

▻https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/11/08/tunisia-privacy-threatened-homosexuality-arrests

#Tunisie #homophobie #homosexualité #COI #LGBT

Palestine.
Le droit à l’appel au boycott reconnu par la Cour d’appel de l’Angleterre et du pays de Galles - AURDIP
▻https://www.aurdip.org/le-droit-a-l-appel-au-boycott.html

La Cour d’appel de l’Angleterre et du pays de Galles (Division civile) a rendu le 3 juillet 2018 un arrêt dans une affaire opposant l’association « Jewish Human Rights Watch » à la mairie de Leicester. La Cour estime que l’appel au boycott des produits des colonies israéliennes, même lancé par un conseil municipal, relève de la liberté d’expression politique et n’y voit aucune incitation à la discrimination raciale (texte de l’arrêt).

L’affaire porte sur la légalité de la résolution adoptée par le conseil municipal de Leicester le 13 novembre 2014. La résolution appelle « au boycott de tout produit originaire des colonies israéliennes illégales de Cisjordanie jusqu’à ce qu’Israël respecte le droit international et se retire des territoires palestiniens occupés ». L’association « Jewish Human Rights Watch » demande à la justice anglaise d’annuler la résolution, en faisant valoir son caractère discriminatoire et les risques qu’elle comporterait vis-à-vis de la communauté juive de la ville, notamment en ce qu’elle conforterait l’idéologie du mouvement BDS.

Dans un jugement du 28 juin 2016, la Haute cour de justice (division administrative) considère que la résolution n’a pas violé la règlementation anglaise, notamment les lois relatives à l’égalité de 2010 et aux collectivités locales de 1988 (texte du jugement). L’arrêt du 3 juillet 2018 de la Cour d’appel confirme le jugement du 28 juin 2016.

L’arrêt rendu est commenté en anglais par le professeur Robert Wintemute (professeur de droits de l’homme au King’s College de Londres), dans un article publié dans la newsletter de septembre 2018 (p. 5) de l’association « British Committee for the Universities of Palestine » (BRICUP).