4 Million Recorded Deaths from Covid-19: Daily Brief

Covid keeps killing, rich countries keep prioritizing pharma profits over human lives; president of Haiti assassinated; fighting for justice in Kyrgyzstan; hate drives back an attempt at inclusion in Russia; a flood of desperate messages from Afghanistan's women; anti-censorship blogger missing in China; Vietnamese novelist wrongly prosecuted; is the EU finally getting tough on authoritarian member Hungary?; and take action to stop abuse in sports! 

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Humanity has now suffered over four million recorded deaths from Covid-19 (the number of total deaths is surely much higher), and yet some rich countries' governments are still blocking wider vaccine production globally by obstructing patent waivers on these and other critical medical products...

Under this current global regime of throttled vaccine production, the vast majority of people have not been vaccinated against the coronavirus and will not have access to vaccines for many years. In the case of Yemen, these problems are compounded by conflict, and even health workers have been abandoned.

The president of Haiti, Jovenel Moïse, has been assassinated.

Nearly one year after the death of human rights defender Azimjon Askarov in custody, his family is still seeking justice, while Kyrgyzstan's authorities have yet to fulfill their obligation to carry out a thorough, independent investigation.

A barrage of hate messages & death threats - possibly also government pressure - have pushed a Russian supermarket chain to pull an ad that included lesbian women.

With increasing reports of deadly attacks on civilians and displacement, women in Afghanistan are fearing for their future...

“I hope Program-Think was merely hit by a car and hospitalized or something,” said a Chinese netizen. One normally wouldn’t wish for such a tragedy, but to many Chinese netizens, this would still be better than being detained by the Chinese authorities for criticizing the government.

The Vietnamese government should immediately release the dissident writer and novelist Pham Chi Thanh and drop all criminal charges against him, Human Rights Watch said today.

It would appear that the EU is finally starting to realize that the authoritarian government in member state Hungary is a serious threat to democracy and human rights in the bloc. Hungary's appalling new anti-LGBT law seems to have been the last straw...

The abuse that so many athletes face in Japan must end. Together, we can build a movement to change the game for good and stop abuse in sports. Show your support for #AthletesAgainstAbuse.

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