The ruling Chinese Communist Party controls all Chinese social media companies.

You may think there’s a difference between public and private companies. Or you may want to believe that global players, attuned to customer and advertiser needs, can play by different rules.

But ultimately, it’s all the same: they are all subject to the Party’s rules.

This fact enables Chinese government interference – including misinformation, disinformation, censorship, and surveillance – that affects not only users based in China but around the world.

Take WeChat, for example. While its 1.3 billion users are primarily in China, the problem for the rest of the world comes when trying to communicate with someone inside the country. WeChat’s embedded vulnerabilities to state surveillance, censorship, and propaganda affect everyone regardless of where they are.

And then there’s TikTok, the video-driven social media platform increasingly preferred by young people around the globe.

As with many other social media, TikTok’s algorithm largely decides what users see. To be fair, TikTok has been comparatively more transparent in reporting on decision-making algorithms and content moderation than some major US tech platforms.

However, there is still no way for outsiders to know what information is being suppressed or promoted on TikTok due to Chinese government influence.

TikTok has repeatedly stated that the Chinese government has not asked it for overseas-based user information or to remove any content, and that if it ever did, the company would not comply. But such reassurances ring hollow given some past experiences.

For example, a 2019 Washington Post investigation showed there were few videos on TikTok concerning the Hong Kong protests, even though the largely youth­led movement garnered massive international attention.

To counter the threat of Beijing’s interference online, governments around the world need to enact and enforce comprehensive data protection laws. They should also adopt regulations that require transparency from all social media platforms.

Social media companies have become important political actors with global reach. As users – and simply as people with fundamental rights – we should know what content they have censored or suppressed.

(written by Alice Autin) 

We all remember the devastating explosion in Beirut’s port that killed 218 people, wounded 7,000, and displaced more than 300,000 in August 2020. It was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history, which pulverized the port and damaged over half the city. 

And regular readers will recall from a recent Daily Brief that Lebanon’s investigation of the disaster has been going nowhere. While the blast followed decades of government mismanagement and corruption, and in spite of significant evidence implicating Lebanese officials in the explosion, impunity prevails in the country.  

But there is progress elsewhere, specifically in the UK, where a court has delivered an important ruling in favor of the victims’ families.

Seeing political interferences at home, the Beirut Bar Association and the victims’ families brought Savaro Limited, the company that owned the chemical stored in the port, to justice. And the court ruled the company liable.  

It’s an important victory that demonstrates the need for outside legal venues in this case. It’s also a reminder that a UN-led investigation, authorized by the UN Human Rights Council, may similarly help victims achieve justice.

In some countries, child murderers get put in prison. In Myanmar under the junta, they get promoted.

It will surprise no one – least of all regular readers here – that Myanmar’s illegitimate rulers are again deepening their repression, with the expansion of martial law to ever more regions. A total of 50 townships are now under this most extreme form of rule.

Three townships joined the growing list last week and are now under the executive and judicial jurisdiction of regional military commander Maj. Gen. Than Htike. He’s infamous for serious human rights abuses, including an attack on a school in September that killed 11 children. (see Daily Brief report)

Than Htike, who’s been sanctioned by the European Union for his abuses, has an extreme level of power in the areas assigned to him. Martial law greenlights further repression of basic rights and guarantees those responsible for serious crimes will not be held accountable.

For two years, Myanmar’s junta has brutalized a population that has bravely opposed military rule.

And the worst of the worst are entrenching their power.

(compiled by Emily Palomo)

• Iranian officials to investigate ‘revenge’ poisoning of schoolgirls (The Guardian)
• Guatemala: Review Decision to Bar Presidential Candidates (HRW) 
• Legacy of Wounded Knee occupation lives on 50 years later (AP News) 
• US announces crackdown on child labour amid surge in violations (AJE) 

This part of an occasional series in this newsletter called, “On Our Terms,” to try to demystify some of the language HRW uses for people who don’t spend every waking hour living and breathing this stuff. We’ve previous written about the word “impunity” and the term “civil society.”

The word “arbitrary” – when used by human rights folks – may not mean what you think it means.

I think it’s fair to say most people read the word “arbitrary” and think of its common meaning: existing or coming about seemingly at random or by chance.

But when human rights defenders say, for example, that someone was “arbitrarily arrested,” they’re not saying it was a random event.

We don’t mean the police picked them up by chance or locked them up because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They didn’t lose some kind of grim lottery.

In fact, the authorities more often than not targeted them – for being opposition politicians or critical journalists or protesters or rights activists or whatever. It’s pretty much the opposite of random.

But “arbitrary” in the way it’s used when referring to unlawful arrests means it was done outside of the law or had no legal basis.

This includes when the arrest was done for exercising protected rights – legitimate activity, such as protesting – or when there is no evidence (no reasonable suspicion) to support whatever pretext the authorities are claiming is the basis of the arrest.

So, the word “arbitrary” has (at least) two meanings: the more common one and the legal one. And it’s usually the latter that human rights folks are usually referring to when highlighting abuses.

(By the way, don’t feel bad if you’d didn’t get this double meaning before now. I didn’t really grasp it until I started working at Human Rights Watch, when I was well into my 40s…)