Trump A Role Model for Kleptocrats: Daily Brief
Trump, self-dealing, and the United States' history of fighting corruption; Russia's conscription in Crimea violates international law; new “sovereign internet” law jeopardizes free speech in Russia; will France's president highlight China’s rights crisis when he visits Beijing?; Ghana should resist anti-LGBT message of 'World Congress of Families’; more aid workers killed in South Sudan; actors convicted for criticizing Myanmar army; and Indonesia is set to expand its abusive blasphemy law.
Corruption is dominating headlines in the United States – from President Donald Trump’s hold on Ukraine aid to his audacious defense of awarding himself a major government contract. How does this all fit into a larger story on US retreat from fighting global corruption? Read this comment by Sarah Saadoun, HRW's Business and Human Rights researcher.
The authorities in Russia are conscripting males in occupied Crimea to serve in the Russian armed forces. “As an occupying power, Russia not only has no right to conscript people in Crimea, but its draft is blatantly violating international law,” says Hugh Williamson, HRW's Europe and Central Asia director.
And the Russian government has gained even greater control over freedom of speech and information online, as the new “sovereign internet” law has gone into effect today.
French President Emmanuel Macron should keep his pledges to press for key human rights improvements during his visit to China (November 4-6), HRW said today in a letter to the president. Macron should publicly press Chinese President Xi Jinping to close the “political education” camps in Xinjiang, to release all wrongfully detained or imprisoned activists, and to respect Hong Kong people’s rights to participate in politics.
It is worrying that the US-based World Congress of Families (WCF), composed in part by organizations that promote exclusionary anti-LGBT rhetoric, have been meeting in Accra, Ghana. WCF leaders have also propagated racism and xenophobia, ideologies that are surely unwelcome in the country.
Three more aid workers, this time staff from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), have been killed in South Sudan, the latest in a long line of frontline workers who have become casualties of the country’s devastating six-year war.
The government of Myanmar seems intent on jumping on the military bandwagon to crack down on freedom of expression.
And Indonesia is set to expand its abusive blasphemy laws as part of an overhaul of the country’s Criminal Code.