How You Can Help Belarus: Daily Brief
Help keep Belarus in the global eye; Venezuela using Covid as an excuse to crack down on dissent; Day of the Disappeared in Bangladesh, South Sudan and Syria; extrajudicial killings in the Philippines; the Trump administration's assault on rights; and the US policing crisis.
The authorities in Belarus have made a sweeping crackdown against journalists, detaining at least 20 yesterday. While foreign journalists were released after swift diplomatic outcry by many of their governments, many now look set to be deported. Some local journalists are still in detention, where torture has been widespread. The move seems to be an effort to hinder reporting of the ongoing protests and dampen international attention. If you have social media accounts, you can help us make sure that Belarus doesn't disappear from the headlines or the diplomatic agenda.
Venezuelan security forces and authorities have used measures to curb the spread of Covid-19 as an excuse to crack down on dissenting voices and intensify their control over the population.
On August 30, the world marks the International Day of the Disappeared. Twelve rights groups are highlighting how Bangladesh security forces and law enforcement agencies continuously commit enforced disappearances with impunity, targeting journalists, activists, and government critics, 12 human rights groups
South Sudan should investigate the fate and whereabouts of scores of victims of enforced disappearances and those still missing from years of civil war, Human Rights Watch and Remembering the Ones We Lost said today.
ISIS has been defeated in Syria, but where are those they kidnapped?
The Malaysian government’s new proposal for a police complaints commission would oddly have no powers to punish rights-abusing police.
The United Nations Human Rights Council should establish an independent international investigation on extrajudicial killings and other human rights violations in the Philippines, Human Rights Watch said today, joining dozens of other human rights and civil society groups worldwide in calling for an investigation. The council will convene its 45th session on September 14, 2020.
When US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced his Commission on Unalienable Rights, we feared that he would use it to assert a dogmatic version of religious liberty to justify restrictions on reproductive freedom and the rights of LGBT people. We were right to worry.
Events in Kenosha, Wisconsin, have sadly shown yet again how policing has gone disastrously wrong in the US.