Oct 18, 2019 | News
The ICJ and the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) have jointly sent an international observer to attend the third hearing of the criminal trial on the “Gezi Park” protest at the Silivri Prison Courthouse in Istanbul, scheduled to take place on 18 October 2019.
The ICJ and IBAHRI observer will be monitoring a trial hearing before İstanbul 30th Assize Court with prinicipal defendant Osman Kavala, and 15 others; Ali Hakan Altınay, Ayşe Mücella Yapıcı, Ayşe Pınar Alabora, Can Dündar, Çiğdem Mater Utku, Gökçe Yılmaz, Handan Meltem Arıkan, Hanzade Hikmet Germiyanoğlu, İnanç Ekmekci, Memet Ali Alabora, Mine Özerden, Şerafettin Can Atalay, Tayfun Kahraman, Yiğit Aksakoğlu and Yiğit Ali Ekmekçi.
The observer will report directly to the IBAHRI and ICJ Secretariats on the proceedings following the mission.
The Gezi Park protests began in May 2013 as an effort by a group of environmentalists to save a park in central Istanbul from being rezoned, but soon turned into nationwide demonstrations.
The protest was quelled by police with the use of tear gas and water cannons against the protesters in Taksim Square. Following a six-year investigation into the events, the 657-page indictment issued by the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office was accepted by the 30th A Court in Istanbul on 4 March 2019.
The defendants are to be charged under Turkish Criminal Code Article 312 (attempt to overthrow the Turkish Government or attempt to prevent it from fulfilling its duties), Article 151 (damage to property), Article 152 (qualified damage to property), Article 174 (possession or exchange of hazardous substances without permission), Article 153 (damaging places of worship and cemeteries), Article 149 (qualified robbery), Article 86 (intentional injury); crimes under the Law on Firearms, Knives and Other Tools no. 6136, and crimes under the Law on Protection of Cultural and Natural Assets no. 2863.
Contact:
Massimo Frigo, Senior Legal Adviser, t: +41 22 979 38 05 – e: massimo.frigo(a)icj.org
Oct 16, 2019 | Multimedia items, News, Video clips
ICJ’s first ever fundraising gala took place on 14 October at the iconic setting of the Palais Eynard in Geneva.
Sami Kanaan, Counselor and former Mayor of the City of Geneva, which provided its generous support, opened the event by speaking of the importance of the ICJ cooperation with the local legal community.
Next, several speakers offered a few answers to the theme of the evening: ‘Geneva, the defense of the Rule of Law: what can I do?’.
Pierre de Preux, former Bâtonnier, explained the great value that can be brought to defending rule of law in the world by supporting the ICJ through missions, as he himself did in Tunisia in the 80s.
He was followed by ICJ Commissioners Sir Nicolas Bratza (former President of the European Court of Human Rights), who discussed backsliding on human rights in contemporary Europe; lawyer Reed Brody, who discussed his work in bringing powerful dictators to account for human rights atrocities; and Justice Martine Comte of France, who described her experience in leading ICJ missions in Central Asia.
The ICJ President Prof. Robert Goldman and ICJ Secretary General Sam Zarifi also addressed the attendees.
The exchange was then followed by an inspiring concert by the young virtuosi of the Menuhin Academy and a delicious Buffet cocktail provided by refugee Chefs Jena Hamza (Syrian Kurd) and Sritharan Tambithurai (Sri Lanka). All in all, a wonderful evening combining substance, beauty and friendship.
Watch the video here:
Sep 27, 2019 | Advocacy, Non-legal submissions
Today, at the close of the 42nd regular session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the ICJ and other NGOs highlighted key acheivements and failures.
The joint civil society statement, delivered by International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) on behalf of the group, read as follows (not all text could be read aloud due to time limits):
“The Council reaffirmed that reprisals can never be justified. Council members rejected attempts to weaken the text including attempts to delete the references to the roles of the Assistant Secretary-General and the Human Rights Council Presidents. The resolution listed key trends such as the patterns of reprisals, increasing self-censorship, the use of national security arguments and counter-terrorism strategies by States as justification for blocking access to the UN, acknowledged the specific risks to individuals in vulnerable situations or belonging to marginalized groups, and called on the UN to implement gender-responsive policies to end reprisals. The Council called on States to combat impunity and to report back to it on how they are preventing reprisals, both online and offline. The Bahamas and the Maldives responded to this call during the interactive dialogue and we encourage more States to follow their good practice. We also encourage States to follow the good practice of Germany and Costa Rica in raising specific cases of reprisals. The Council also welcomed the role of the Assistant Secretary-General and invited the General Assembly to step up its efforts to address reprisals and ensure a coherent system-wide response.
We welcome the creation of a Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) on Venezuela as an important step towards accountability for the grave human rights violations documented by the High Commissioner. We urge Venezuela to cooperate with the FFM and to honor the commitments they have made during this session, including by allowing OHCHR unfettered access to all regions and detention centers and implementing their recommendations. Cooperation and constructive engagement and measures for international accountability and justice should be seen as complementary and mutually reinforcing.
We welcome the renewal and strengthening of the mandate of the Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen, sending a clear message to parties to the conflict – and to victims – that accountability is at the center of the mandate, and providing a crucial and much-needed deterrent to further violations and abuses. States should support the recommendations made by the GEE in their recent report, including prohibiting the authorization of transfers of, and refraining from providing, arms that could be used in the conflict to such parties; and clarifying the GEE’s role to collect and preserve evidence of abuses.
We welcome the renewal of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Cambodia, but regret that calls to strengthen the mandate of the OHCHR to monitor and report on the situation have been ignored. We regret that the resolution fails to accurately depict the continuing crackdowns on civil society and the severity and scale of recent attacks on the political opposition.
We welcome the renewal of the mandate of the Commission of Inquiry on Burundi. Its work is vital as the country heads towards elections in 2020. The Burundian Government should desist from denial and insults, and should cooperate with the Commission and other UN bodies and mechanisms.
We welcome that the EU and OIC have jointly presented a resolution on Myanmar requesting the High Commissioner to report on the implementation of the recommendations of the Fact-Finding Mission at HRC 45. However, the international community needs to take stronger action to ensure accountability for and cessation of grave international crimes, in particular by referring Myanmar to the ICC and imposing a global arms embargo – and by acting on the FFM’s reports, including those on economic interests of the military and on sexual and gender-based violence in Myanmar and the gendered impact of its ethnic conflicts.
The joint EU/OIC resolution on Myanmar welcomes the FFM report on the military’s economic interests, which identifies companies contributing to abuses. The High Commissioner, however, has still not transmitted the database of companies facilitating Israel’s illegal settlements more than 2 and a half years after its mandated release. The High Commissioner pledged in March to fulfil the mandate “within the coming months”. The ongoing unexplained and unprecedented delays have become a matter of credibility, for both the High Commissioner and the HRC. Mr. President, we request that you confer with the High Commissioner and advise as soon as possible when this important Council mandate will be fulfilled.
‘Cautious optimism’ best defines our approach to Sudan. While this year’s resolution, which welcomes the peaceful popular uprising, renews the Independent Expert’s mandate, supports the opening of an OHCHR country office, and highlights the role and needs of civil society, is an improvement on 2018, significant challenges remain. Ensuring accountability for the perpetrators of grave human rights and humanitarian law violations should be a central priority for the new Government, and the Council should assist in this regard.
We regret the lack of Council action on Kashmir and urge the Council, as well as India and Pakistan, to act on all the recommendations in the report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
On terrorism and human rights, we are deeply disappointed that Mexico and other States have partially acquiesced in attempts by Egypt to dilute or distract the work of the Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism away from its appropriate focus on human rights violations while countering terrorism and human rights of victims of terrorism. We regret that States have asked the Special Rapporteur to spend the limited time and resources of the mandate, to comment on the overbroad concept of the “effects” of terrorism, by which Egypt and some other States seem primarily to mean macroeconomic, industrial, and investment impacts, rather than the human rights of individual victims. The length to which States seem willing to put the existing Special Rapporteur’s mandate at risk, in the name of protecting it, while failing even to incorporate stronger consensus text on human rights issues included in the most recent merged parallel resolution at the General Assembly, suggests that the merger of the previous Mexican and Egyptian thematic resolutions no longer holds any real promise of positive results for human rights.
We welcome the adoption of the resolution on the question of the death penalty, which is an important reflection of the movement towards the international abolition of this cruel punishment. Significantly, this resolution reiterates and affirms the position of international law that the abolition of the death penalty is an irrevocable commitment and that an absolute prohibition exists to guard against its reintroduction. We also welcome the acknowledgement of the ‘most serious crimes’ threshold that acts to restrict the death penalty, in States that have yet to abolish it, only to crimes of extreme gravity; this resolution plainly identifies that criminal conduct that does not result directly and intentionally in death can never meet the threshold test and can never serve as a basis for the use of the death penalty. We are very pleased to acknowledge that the adoption of this resolution is complimentary to the General Assembly’s resolution calling for an international moratorium on the death penalty and, together, they serve to illustrate the advancing global commitment to abolition.
We welcome the Council’s renewed attention to the protection of the right to privacy in the digital age: fully integrating human rights into the design, development and deployment of Artificial Intelligence, machine learning technologies, automated decision-making, and biometric systems, is essential to safeguard not only the right to privacy, but also to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association, and economic social and cultural rights.
On human rights in the administration of justice, we welcome the focus in this year’s resolution on concrete measures to prevent and respond to violence, death and serious injury in situations of deprivation of liberty, which illustrates the potential of thematic resolutions to set out specific practical, legal and policy steps that can be drawn on by governments, civil society, and other stakeholders to have real positive impact at the national level.
We commend Australia for its leadership on Saudi Arabia, as well as the other States who stood up for women’s rights activists and accountability. We urge more States to live up to their commitment to defend civil society and sign the statement in the coming 2 weeks.
We appreciate the attention paid by individual governments to the situation in China, including the dire situation facing Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims; the crackdown on human rights defenders, including those working to draw attention to violations of economic, social and cultural rights; and the suppression of fundamental freedoms in Tibet. However, we deplore that the Council and many of its members have once again failed to take decisive action to ensure monitoring and reporting on the human rights situation in the country, especially Xinjiang, and press for access for the High Commissioner.
For five years since the last joint statement in March 2014, the Council has failed to hold Egypt accountable for continuing systematic and widespread gross human rights violations. In the latest crackdown on peaceful protests, reports indicate that more than 2000 people have been arrested in the past week. When will the Council break its silence and convene a Special Session to address the grave and deteriorating human rights situation in Egypt?”
Signatories:
- International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)
- DefendDefenders (the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project)
- Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI)
- CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation
- Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies
- Asian Legal Resource Centre
- Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA)
- International Commission of Jurists (ICJ)
- Amnesty International
- Association for Progressive Communications (APC)
- Human Rights Watch
- International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
Sep 27, 2019 | News
ICJ today denounced the promulgation of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Actions (In Aid of Civil Power) Ordinance, 2019, by the Governor of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on 5 August 2019.
The ICJ said that implementation of the Ordinance will lead to serious human rights violations and miscarriages of justice, contrary to the purported aims of the measures.
“The Ordinance is yet another example of Pakistan’s resort to ‘exceptional’ measures that are grossly incompatible with human rights protections, ostensibly to combat terrorism and other serious crime,” said Frederick Rawski, ICJ’s Asia Director.
“Pakistan must reject this dangerous, oppressive, and counter productive strategy and instead strengthen its judicial process and law enforcement in line with its domestic law and international human rights law obligations,” he added.
The Ordinance gives sweeping powers to members of the armed forces, including the power to detain people without charge or trial on a number of vaguely defined grounds where it appears that such “internment” would be expedient for peace. Individuals may be detained for an unspecified period without any right to be brought before a court of law or to challenge the lawfulness of detention before a court.
In addition to the vague and overbroad detention provisions, the Ordinance provides that statements or depositions by members of the armed forces shall on their own be sufficient for convicting the detainees if they are tried for any offence.
The Ordinance also provides wide immunity for armed forces for any action done, taken, ordered to be taken, or conferred, assumed or exercised by, before or after the promulgation of the Ordinance.
The Ordinance is incompatible with “fundamental rights” guaranteed by the Constitution of Pakistan, as well as Pakistan’s international legal obligations, including under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the ICJ said.
Article 9(4) of the ICCPR, for example, guarantees the right of all detainees to take proceedings before a court to challenge the lawfulness of their detention, and to be released if the court finds such detention unlawful.
The President of Pakistan passed similar regulations, namely, the Actions (In Aid of Civil Power) Regulations in 2011, which were applicable in the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA). The Actions (in Aid of Civil Power) Regulations were extensively used as a legal cover for arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances.
In their review of Pakistan’s implementation of the ICCPR and the Convention against Torture (CAT), the UN Human Rights Committee and the UN Committee against Torture in 2017 expressed concern about the Regulations, and recommended that Pakistan “review the Actions (in aid of Civil Power) Regulation, 2011 with a view to repealing it or bringing it into conformity with international standards.”
“It is regrettable that not only did Pakistan flout these express recommendations of the UN Committees, but that it extended the scope of the regulations,” added Rawski.
“This step also calls into question Pakistan’s pledge for election to the UN Human Rights Council in 2017, where Pakistan ‘firmly resolved to uphold, promote and safeguard universal human rights and fundamental freedoms for all’,” Rawski said.
ICJ urges the Pakistan Government to immediately revoke the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Actions (In Aid of Civil Power) Ordinance, and to review all national security legislation to ensure it is fully compatible with international human rights law and standards.
Contact
Frederick Rawski (Bangkok), ICJ Asia Pacific Regional Director, e: frederick.rawski(a)icj.org
Reema Omer, ICJ Legal Advisor (South Asia) t: +447889565691; e: reema.omer(a)icj.org
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Full statement, with additional information: Pakistan-Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Actions Ordinance-Press releases-2019-ENG (PDF)
Sep 13, 2019 | News
The ICJ, in collaboration with the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) of the Republic of Zimbabwe, has concluded a two-day Judicial Symposium on the theme ‘Core-Skilling: Towards a Human Rights Jurisprudence’, organized to mark the end of the second judicial term in the Zimbabwe judicial calendar.
In his remarks at the opening of the symposium, ICJ’s Africa Regional Director, Mr Arnold Tsunga, noted that the theme of the symposium had been carefully chosen to enhance discourse on national transformation in an atmosphere of respect for the rule of law and international human rights. He noted further that the symposium was to critique the concept of transformative adjudication and explore its relevance to applying the Constitution of Zimbabwe as an instrument and framework for national transformation.
Noting that the ICJ appreciated its on-going partnership with the JSC in Zimbabwe, Mr Tsunga expressed the hope that the training and symposium would enhance the effectiveness of the judiciary with a view to improving access to justice for all, especially victims of human rights violations, women, marginalized and vulnerable groups and contributing to attainment of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals number 16 and 5.
On his part, in his opening remarks the Chief Justice of the Republic of Zimbabwe, the Hon. Chief Justice Malaba, noted that the ICJ-JSC organized symposia have provided a platform for continuous improvement of judicial work and networking amongst judges.
Chief Justice Malaba observed that these meetings have enabled judges to dialogue on how to improve the effectiveness and efficiency in the justice delivery system. He noted that this year’s theme on human rights jurisprudence lies at the heart of an independent and effective judiciary.
He further noted that the current Constitution of Zimbabwe has a better framework and potential for the protection of human rights than previous constitutions. Accordingly, he expressed the view that the judiciary has a more important role to play in protecting and safeguarding human rights.
He highlighted that the judiciary’s commitment to the protection of human rights is evidenced in local jurisprudence in respect to human rights cases, where several important judgments have been given by all the courts.
Chief Justice Malaba used the opportunity to give updates on developments which were taking place within the JSC, particularly in its research centre, in the High Court, in the Fiscal and Tax Appeals Division, amendments to the Judicial Laws which were gazetted on the 9th of September 2019.
Chief Justice Malaba stated that in performance appraisal, the JSC has constituted a Performance and Training Committee led by the Deputy Chief Justice to come up with a system that enables accurate measurement of the performance of judges.
Responding to issues of accountability raised by the Chief Justice, ICJ’s Mr Tsunga urged the JSC to develop and adopt a system to track, monitor, document and communicate results arising from these trainings, as the results would help the ICJ, and international development partners to evaluate the usefulness of the trainings and efforts at justice sector reforms.
This year’s symposium was attended by 16 female and 27 male judges from the Constitutional Court, Supreme Court, High Court, Labour Court and Administrative Court of Zimbabwe.
