• Beijing’s threats to silence athletes
  • Israel demolishes another Palestinian home
  • Avoidable cervical cancer deaths in the US.
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As sports fever grows with the approach of the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022, so too do the expectations of the Chinese authorities and their collaborators in the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for athletes to be silent about China's mass atrocity crimes. But here's some news for them: athletes are not commodities they can use to "sportswash" the country's global reputation; athletes are human beings with the exact same rights we all have. Sadly, their rights will be stepped on in Beijing. Many would like to speak out about China's crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and numerous other serious abuses, but the threats they face for doing so are all too real.

In particular, this fresh quote from Yang Shu, the Deputy Director General of Beijing 2022's International Relations Department, should send a shiver down the IOC's spine (if only the IOC had one): "…any behavior or speeches that are against the Olympic spirit, especially against Chinese laws and regulations, are also subject to certain punishment."

It's chilling because, as our Senior China Researcher, Yaqiu Wang, told The Guardian: "Chinese laws are very vague on the crimes that can be used to prosecute people's free speech… There are all kinds of crimes that can be levelled at peaceful, critical comments. And in China the conviction rate is 99%." Essentially, as the IOC stands by, the Chinese authorities will decide what speech goes, "against the Olympic spirit," and in the Orwellian, mass-surveillance state that is today's China, they won't miss much.

Israeli police yesterday demolished the home of a Palestinian family in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. As our Israel/Palestine Director, Omar Shakir, says, such actions amount to war crimes. The international law of occupation, which applies to East Jerusalem, prohibits the destruction of property except for reasons of military necessity. Yet for decades, Israeli officials have violated these international prohibitions with impunity. Palestinians have faced a near-categorical denial of building permits, and we've seen the demolition of thousands of homes on the pretext of lacking permits – with no security justification.

This is, of course, just one facet of the Israeli authorities' systematic discrimination against Palestinians. The overarching Israeli government policy to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians and the grave abuses committed against Palestinians living in the occupied territory, including East Jerusalem, amounts to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution, as we detailed extensively in a report last year. And as with all crimes everywhere in the world, these serious abuses will only continue unless and until the perpetrators face justice.

What's worse than a tragedy? An avoidable tragedy. Take cervical cancer, for example. It is highly preventable and treatable, and yet, last year alone, an estimated 4,290 women in the United States died from cervical cancer, including disproportionately high numbers of Black women. In a new report on the US state of Georgia from the Southern Rural Black Women's Initiative for Economic and Social Justice (SRBWI) and Human Rights Watch, we document how state and federal policies neglect the reproductive healthcare needs of rural Black women.

The vast majority of cervical cancer cases derive from the human papillomavirus (HPV), for which there is an effective vaccine, and most cases of cervical cancer can be prevented with routine screenings and follow-up care. But women interviewed for this study described struggling to pay for screenings and follow-up care. Many of these women – the majority uninsured – said that because of the cost, they often skipped medical appointments or cancer screening.

In 2020, 194 countries committed to ending cervical cancer globally, the first such commitment ever made for a cancer, but the US is falling short. These cervical cancer deaths aren't just a tragedy, as Women's Rights Researcher Annerieke Daniel says, "they reveal systemic exclusion from lifesaving health care and information. Rural communities face great difficulty just getting to a doctor, and the stark racial disparities in outcomes show a clear pattern of discrimination and neglect."

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