HUMAN RIGHTS

Photo: Migrant workers in Kerala. Courtesy of firstpost.com

The South Indian State of Kerala Shows the Way By Embracing Migrant Workers

By Shastri Ramachandaran*

NEW DELHI (IDN) – By any yardstick of human and social development, Kerala in South India is ahead of most Indian states. It provides social security to all sections of employees and workers through schemes that are superior to what obtains in most other states. Its labour policies are progressive. Minimum wages, especially, for unorganised, and even unskilled workers are higher – perhaps the highest, than in any other state.

Healthcare and education are good, and there is no dearth of opportunities, especially, for low-end work, which pays well and is a sustainable long-term proposition. Yet, the cost of living is not high.

: Shastri Ramachandran; THE WORLD; Asia-Pacific; 24 June 2018

Photo: Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, leader of Ambazonia.

Amnesty Finds Troubles Brewing in Cameroon

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – In a new 37-page report, the rights watchdog Amnesty International has documented “unlawful killings, destruction of private property, arbitrary arrests and torture” in two restive regions in Cameroon tied to a power struggle pitting French- against English speaking Cameroonians.

In the Amnesty report titled, A turn for the worse: Violence and human rights violations in Anglophone Cameroon, victims gave harrowing accounts of beatings and allegations of simulated electrocution and torture carried out by the military as well as attacks on schools and teachers by armed Anglophone separatists.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 20 June 2018

Photo: Families of massacre victims, in Kumasi Ghana, April 2018. © 2018 Reed Brody/HRW

Gambia Ex-President Tied to 2005 Murders of Refugees

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK | ACCRA (IDN) – Strong evidence has been gathered linking the former president of The Gambia, Yahya Jammeh, to the murder of 44 West African migrants mostly from Ghana by operatives of the ex-president.

The sole survivor of the mass killing, also from Ghana, promised himself not to rest until Jammeh was brought to justice. ''It is my mission, on behalf of my friends, we want justice,'' Martin Kyere, now age 37, told the BBC.

Kyere was selling shoes in Ghana and the Ivory Coast when he decided to use his savings to travel to Senegal and then to Europe. His plan fell apart when the boat used by migrants ran out of fuel and beached in the Gambia. The group was arrested, detained for a week in Banjul and beaten.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 29 May 2018

Image: Buddhism – which has shaped Asian civilizations for over 2000 years – has much to offer in guiding Asia's development path.

Asia's Buddhists Should Step Forward to Pave the Way to Sustainable Development

Viewpoint by Kalinga Seneviratne*

SINGAPORE (IDN) – Buddhists across Asia are going to temples, bathing the baby Buddha, giving food to monks, lighting lamps and offering incense sticks accompanied by chanting paying homage to the Buddha on Vesak day, May 29 this year. While keeping with these traditions is important, Asia's Buddhists are letting go a great opportunity to shape the global development path in an ecologically friendly, compassionate and a sustainable manner.

As the centre of gravity of the world’s economy shifts to Asia, Buddhism – which has shaped Asian civilizations for over 2000 years – has much to offer in guiding Asia's development path. Buddhist philosophy has a rich reservoir of ideas on living sufficiently and comfortably without exploiting nature and people, ideas that anyone can adopt irrespective of your religious affiliations, as the mindfulness fad in the West shows. Mindfulness itself is rooted in the age-old Buddhist meditation practice of 'Vipassana Bhavana'.

: Kalinga Seneviratne; OPINION; 29 May 2018

Governments Do Little as West African Countries are Plundered

By Will Fitzgibbon

In the region’s largest-ever journalism collaboration, reporters from 11 countries expose the financial secrets of some of West Africa's most powerful politicians, moguls and corporations. The following article first appeared on the website of International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on 22 May 2018 with the headline WEST AFRICA LEAKS: How Officials, Businesses and Traffickers Hide Billions from Cash-Starved Governments Offshore. Contributors to this story: Moussa Aksar and Alloycious David. – The Editor.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (IDN | ICIJ) – Government officials, arms merchants and corporations have spirited away millions of dollars from destitute West African nations through offshore tax havens, an investigation by journalists from the region and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has found.

: UN Bureau; THE WORLD; Africa; 24 May 2018

Photo: Panelists in the April 24 event, including Kazakh Vice-Minister Berik Aryn (extreme left), UNAOC High Representative Al-Nasser (centre), and Ambassador Kairat Umarov, the Kazakh Permanent Representative to the UN (third from right at the back). Credit: Kazakh Permanent Mission to the UN Headquarters in New York.

Kazakhstan Sets the Ball Rolling for the Landmark Interfaith Congress in Astana

By J Nastranis

UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – "The holy scriptures of the Koran, Bible, Torah, the Bhagwad Geeta or the Lotus Sutra" underline "the vital importance to unite the efforts of political and religious leaders for the cause of security and stability across our planet," said Kazakhstan's Vice-Minister for Religious Affairs and Civil Society, Berik Aryn, in a keynote address at an event organized by the Kazakh Permanent Mission to the UN in partnership with the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC).

He was speaking on behalf of Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the Chairman of the Senate of the Parliament of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and Head of the Secretariat of the Congress of the Leaders of World and Traditional Religions, Kazakhstan’s interfaith initiative launched in 2003.

: J Nastranis; THE WORLD; Central Asia; 30 April 2018

State of Emergency for Press Freedom in Europe

By ECPMF

BERLIN (IDN) – The European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) in Leipzig, Germany, is warning against the dismantlement of freedom rights and the increasing threat against journalists in the EU.

"Demagogues and autocrats are fighting the free press because they cannot stand democratic control. Under a corrupt administration the work of an investigative journalist is life-threatening," says Lutz Kinkel, ECPMF's managing director. "We have to defend ourselves with all our might to protect journalists. Otherwise the EU will lose its democratic substance."

The ECPMF was founded in 2015 to publicise violations of the European Charter on Freedom of the Press.

: UN Bureau; THE WORLD; EU & Europe; 25 April 2018

Photo: The Press Union of Liberia President Charles Coffey, Sr. Credit: Front Page of Africa

Press Freedom Becoming Increasingly Vulnerable in Liberia

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK | MONROVIA (IDN) – Liberia’s new government under President George Weah is not having a honeymoon with the media though he has endeavoured to reassure journalists that they would have a "200 percent freedom of expression and press freedom under my government".

The one-time soccer star, who succeeded Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in the country's first peaceful change of power in seven decades in January 2018, is accused of allowing the press to be muzzled.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 17 April 2018

Photo: Omoyele Sowore | Credit: Daily Post Nigeria

A Journalist Joins the Presidential Race in Nigeria

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK | LAGOS (IDN) – Next year’s race for the presidency in Nigeria just got a lot more interesting as a crusading journalist – an upstart known for exposing the millions and billions stolen by a national “loot-ocracy” – announced his candidacy for the nation’s top job.

As news spread that the journalist, Omoyele Sowore, was testing the waters for national office, President Muhammadu Buhari, age 75, reminded Nigerians that he too would be a candidate, ending months of speculation that the President might step down.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; Africa; 10 April 2018

Image: Can search engine rankings swing elections? Source: New Internationalist. © Illustration by Livio Fania.

Democracy à la Google, Facebook & YouTube: Some Reflections

Viewpoint by Lucas Malaspina*

ROME (IDN) – When Mark Zuckerberg decided to offer emerging nations Internet.org, anger was not long in exploding. As Daniel Leisegang writes in ‘Facebook is saving the world’, this project which emerged in 2013 was a humanitarian masquerade: to allow Internet access to a huge number of Third World citizens who still remained outside the global village.

The idea was to break the barriers that prevent, for example, two-thirds of the Indian population from joining Facebook. However, besides India, the project was aimed at a total of 100 more nations.