Human Rights Watch Daily Brief, 14 January 2016
The Academy Awards and human rights; paid family leave in New York; Yemen Houthis endangered school for blind; Russia - #KissingIsNotACrime; Plastic People & human rights; how many dead in Syria?; DR Congo's brave activists; home raid of Pakistan reporter "an outrage"; & West Africa is Ebola free...
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Oscar nominations are out, and among the nominees for Best Documentary Feature and Best Foreign Language Film are three films every human rights advocate should watch. Cartel Land weaves the stories of two vigilante groups working against drug cartels in Mexico. The Look of Silence intimately displays the continued impunity for genocide perpetrators in Indonesia. Finally, the Turkish-language film, Mustang, tells a story of forced child marriage. Human Rights Watch featured these films in its Film Festival and congratulates the nominees.
Yesterday, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo pledged to prioritize passing a paid family leave law this year. This an excellent idea and would greatly benefit working families in New York State. Time for the United States federal government to join the rest of the world and make it unanimous.
Turkey has announced a plan to give Syrians work permits, meaning hundreds of thousands of Syrian children currently in Turkey might be able to attend school. Efforts to expand education opportunities to Syrian refugee children have grown as Turkey and the European Union attempt to stem the flow of refugees into Europe.
Burma has put a social worker on trial for a Facebook post he wrote that mocked Burma's military. Patrick Kum Jaa Lee's case is well known among activists in Burma who fear a crackdown on the type of satirical social media posts that millions of citizens in the country make every day.