Sri Lanka in Turmoil – What Next? Daily Brief

More than 150 people have been reported injured and at least five dead during attacks on peaceful protesters in Sri Lanka by government supporters. The clashes marked a dangerous escalation of the present crisis, increasing the risk of further deadly violence. In recent months, Sri Lanka’s economic crisis has provoked widespread protests calling for political reforms, respect for human rights and the resignation of the president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and his brother Mahinda, the prime minister. Witness accounts and video footage of the May 9 clashes show government supporters attacking the protesters with clubs and other weapons and setting fire to tents. Hours later, Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned as prime minister. Mahinda Rajapaksa and Gotabaya Rajapaksa, as well as other senior figures in the current administration, were implicated in the killing and enforced disappearance of journalists and political activists between 2005 and 2010, and in numerous war crimes during the civil war that ended in May 2009. A report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on Sri Lanka, issued in February this year, shows an alarming decline of the rights situation in the country. Concerned governments and international institutions, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, which are offering assistance to address the country’s economic crisis, should redouble their efforts to press the Sri Lankan government to make real progress on rights, and investigate and appropriately prosecute recent acts of violence as well as past violations of human rights. 

Afghanistan is in the grips of one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. More than 24.4 million people will need humanitarian health aid in 2022, roughly two-thirds of the population. Earlier this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that Afghanistan’s health system was on the brink of collapse. Afghanistan’s banking crisis and loss of funding has meant that most healthcare workers have not been paid for months, and clinics and hospitals are running seriously short of essential medicines and supplies, while the country is facing multiple outbreaks of disease, including Covid-19, measles, and diarrhea, as well as acute malnutrition. The economic crisis is killing Afghans every day, among them many children. While pressing the Taliban authorities to end human rights violations, donors need to also take urgent steps to allow the Afghan economy to function and rebuild Afghanistan’s fragile healthcare system. 

On April 30, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad granted a general amnesty for “Syrian citizens detained on ‘terrorism-related’ crimes’”.  Since then, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) has documented the release of 193 detainees, including seven who were children at the time of their arrest. While this is good news, no information has been provided about the many others who remain locked away in the Syrian government’s “torture archipelago”, where authorities have killed or allowed detainees to die under torture. Images released over the last few days show masses of people gathered under al Ra’is Bridge in Damascus, anxiously awaiting the potential arrival of their loved ones. Many of these families had seen names of their relatives on lists posted on social media. The head of Syria’s Counterterrorism Court, Zahera al-Bashmani, later confirmed that these lists were fake, meaning that numerous families still don’t know whether their loved ones will return or continue to suffer in abhorrent prison conditions. 

As Lebanese citizens get ready to vote in parliamentary elections Sunday, citizens with disabilities may not be able to safely cast their ballots, as polling stations are often located in school buildings, many of which lack suitable access for people with disabilities. People with disabilities make up an estimated 10 to 15 percent of the country’s population. Furthermore, Lebanon has the greatest number of older citizens in the Middle East, some of whom have limited mobility. While Lebanon’s electoral law requires the Interior Ministry take measures to ensure people with disabilities can vote, in Lebanon’s previous elections it is estimated that only a few thousand did so. Many reported serious obstacles such as polling stations located on higher floors, and only accessible via a flight of stairs. Instead of improving accessibility at the last elections in 2018, the Interior Ministry tasked security forces and civil defense members with carrying people upstairs, according to the Lebanese Union for People with Physical Disabilities (LUPD) – a humiliating experience that also resulted in serious health complications for some. While the locations of a small number of polling stations have been switched to more accessible venues this time, much more needs to be done to ensure people with disabilities and older people can vote freely and with dignity.

A court in the Polish city of Rzeszów has thrown out a case against an LGBT rights activist sued by a commune of about 10,000 people in southeastern Poland for defamation. In 2019, along with dozens of communities across Poland, Niebylec passed a resolution to “stop LGBT ideology.” In response Bartosz Staszewski designed a campaign in which he photographed himself and other lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people with signs reading “LGBT-Free Zone” at the entrance to places that had enacted anti-LGBT resolutions. The European Commission has taken legal action against Poland for these zones. In March, a provincial administrative court in Rzeszów had ruled that “there is no LGBT ideology, just as there is no heterosexual ideology”, and overturned Niebylec’s anti-LGBT resolution. Now, just two months later, Niebylec’s attempt to intimidate Staszewski and other LGBT activists has also been thrown out. In recent years, Poland’s ruling party has fuelled anti-LGBT discrimination across the country and launched an unrelenting crackdown on women’s rights and human rights defenders. The dismissal of Staszewski’s case is critical for the dignity of LGBT people and freedom of expression. 

As billionaire Elon Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” is set to buy Twitter, it is important to consider the implications of a single individual purchasing and exercising control over a company like Twitter, says Frederike Kaltheuner, director of the Technology and Human Rights division at Human Rights Watch in an interview with Amy Braunschweiger. For years organizations like Amnesty International have tracked the disturbing persistence of hate speech on Twitter – especially violent and abusive speech against women, including lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women. Social media platforms have also been used to escalate abuse against people because of their ethnicity or religion. An absolutist view on freedom of expression doesn’t wrestle with these complex challenges of ensuring that speech does not infringe on other people’s rights – to the detriment of those on the receiving end. “Social media companies have become the de facto infrastructure of the global public sphere”, says Kaltheuner. “The decisions they make have far-reaching consequences on people’s lives and rights. We can’t just blindly trust that they will do the right thing and regulate themselves.” More democratic oversight of powerful technology companies, such as regulation that is grounded in international human rights standards, is urgently needed to make sure, “that the technological infrastructure we depend on to access critical information, to form social movements, and to organize supports – as opposed to undermines – our rights”, Kaltheuner concludes. 

An unnamed Myanmar photographer and contributor to the New York Times is a Pulitzer Prize finalist “for striking images, conducted at great personal risk, of the military coup in Myanmar”. The photographer could not be named for fear of endangering their life. Also among the prizes is a special citation for the journalists of Ukraine, who “despite bombardment, abductions, occupation, and even deaths in their ranks, … have persisted in their effort to provide an accurate picture of a terrible reality." This year’s prizes recognized the ongoing risk of practicing journalism: The winning team of feature photojournalists included previous winner Danish Siddiqui, Reuters’ former Chief Photographer in India. Shortly after documenting the devastation of Covid in India, for which the team received this year’s prize, Siddiqui was killed in Afghanistan while doing his job. He had received the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography, as part of a team of photographers, for documenting the Rohingya refugee crisis.