UK considers envoy for Britons held abroad
Britain is preparing to emulate the United States by appointing an envoy tasked with freeing citizens arbitrarily detained abroad, as it faces calls to do more to bring them home.
High-profile cases like jailed Egyptian-British activist Alaa Abdel Fattah and imprisoned Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai have spotlighted the plight of Britons held in jails overseas.
The UK foreign ministry insists it continues to press such cases with governments, but relatives of detainees and human rights organisations complain of a lack of urgency and transparency.
"The government is committed to strengthening support for British nationals, including through the appointment of a new envoy," a Foreign Office spokesperson told AFP.
Middle East Minister Hamish Falconer has said an "Envoy for Complex Consular Detentions" is expected to be appointed "before the summer".
The government has not specified the terms of the role but it could be similar to America's Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, a position created in 2015.
Unlike the United States though, Britain does not take part in prisoner exchanges.
Professor Carla Ferstman, an expert on arbitrary detentions at the Human Rights Centre at Essex Law School, said appointing someone would be the "clearest thing that the UK can do that it hasn't done yet".
"When you have someone at the highest level they command a certain level of respect," she told AFP.
Abdel Fattah was arrested in September 2019 and sentenced to five years in prison on charges of "spreading false news" after sharing a Facebook post about police brutality.
He is still imprisoned despite a hunger strike by his mother and Britain's foreign ministry saying it is pushing for his release "at the highest levels of the Egyptian government".
His sister Sanaa Seif said an envoy would mean "a proper continued focus on" freeing detainees.
- 'Clear strategy' -
"It's also important to have a focal point that can help coordinate between different government bodies so that they all work in synchronisation," she told AFP.
Seif believes the government should consider revising travel advice to Egypt too, a call also made by lawmakers who have suggested the government should sanction Egyptian officials as well.
"Is it not clear that words are no longer sufficient?" Conservative peer Guy Black asked in parliament's House of Lords recently.
Ferstman said tightening travel guidance can be a powerful tool.
"It's a big deal because all of a sudden tourists can't get insurance and it's harder for business travel to happen. There's all kinds of implications," she explained.
Amnesty International recently called for the government to develop a "clear strategy" to support arbitrarily detained Britons, including by demanding that UK officials attend trials.
The Labour government pledged in its general election-winning manifesto last year that it would introduce "a new right to consular assistance in cases of human rights violations".
Amnesty also wants the government to call for a person's "immediate release", including publicly when it is requested by the family.
It said London took three years to publicly call for Lai to be freed, something his son Sebastian said "sends the wrong message" to "autocratic states".
"The quicker we have the government speak out post-arrest, that's the window of opportunity to have people released," Eilidh Macpherson, Amnesty's campaigns manager for individuals at risk told AFP.
UK officials say the government can be wary of accusations it is interfering in another country's judicial system.
"Sometimes it may need to be quiet about what it's doing, but this shouldn't come at the expense of transparency," said Ferstman.
Jagtar Singh Johal, a Sikh blogger from Scotland, was arrested in India in November 2017 while there for his wedding on accusations of being part of a terror plot against right-wing Hindu leaders.
He has not been convicted of a crime and in March was cleared in one of the nine charges against him.
The foreign ministry spokesperson said Foreign Secretary David Lammy "continues to raise concerns" about the detention with India's government "at every appropriate opportunity".
But his brother, Gurpreet Singh Johal complains of being kept in the dark.
"We don't know what's actually being said," he told AFP.
Gurpreet said an envoy would be a "good thing" but until the position is in place, "We won't know exactly what it means."
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ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
Among all Israel's targets in Iran, the strikes at Evin Prison left some people 'in disbelief'
Interrogations. Torture. Mock executions. Accounts from inside Iran's Evin Prison are as harrowing as they are rare — many of those locked up inside never make it out. The notorious facility, on the outskirts of the country's capital Tehran, is used to house political prisoners who dare show dissent to the country's Islamist regime. In the final days of its war with Iran, Israel used fighter jets to bomb the jail, with the country's top politicians spinning the June 23 attack as a symbolic blow against its arch enemy. Yesterday, Asghar Jahangir, a spokesperson for Iran's judiciary, was quoted in the country's Mizan news outlet as saying 71 people had been killed in the attack. He said the number included "administrative staff, youth doing their military service, detainees, family members of detainees who were visiting them and neighbours who lived in the prison's vicinity". Analysts interpreted the strikes as a clear sign Israel had expanded its targets from just military and nuclear facilities. Anoosheh Ashoori, a British-Iranian engineer, was held in Evin prison from August 2017 to March 2022, after being accused of espionage. He said he was abducted in the street while back in Iran to visit his mother after she had a knee operation. He was bundled into a car, and his ordeal had begun. "They blindfolded me and they ordered me to put my head on the lap of the person sitting next to my left," he said. "After a while I could hear the traffic, the sound of the traffic fading." Mr Ahoori was taken to Evin Prison. Mr Ahoori said he was kept in solitary confinement, given "foul food", and prevented from sleeping, with a floodlight shined on his head. "It was so frightening," he said. "My days were in that 2 metre by 3 metre cell, with the sound of a malfunctioning air conditioning unit together with hearing all the sounds of crying, begging, whimpering of the others in the neighbouring cells." During his time in Evin Prison, Mr Ashoori said he spent 116 days at two interrogation centres, including one run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. "The pressure was so much and the threats to kill my family members were so real," he said. "After a while of sleep deprivation, long hours of interrogation, I mean, you just name it and it's happening to you." A video shared by Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar on social media showed an entrance to the compound blown apart and the accompanying text: "Long live freedom, damn it!" However, doubt has now been cast over that footage, with experts telling ABC News Verify it could be AI-generated. That doesn't mean the jail wasn't hit, though. Last week, Defence Minister Israel Katz said the air force was striking "regime targets and agencies of government repression" across Tehran, including Evin Prison. Video broadcast on Iranian state television showed widespread destruction outside the facility, and emergency services carrying an injured man from the scene on a stretcher. The jail was built about 50 years ago and has gained notoriety since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution. It now houses thousands of protesters, journalists, people accused of espionage, activists and academics. Human rights organisations have decried the number of inmates in Evin accused of arbitrary catch-all offences like "enmity against God" and "corruption on earth". Both are punishable by death and are used by Iran's regime as judicial trump cards to arrest dissidents. Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who was arrested while attending a conference in Iran, spent more than two years in the jail on charges of espionage. She was eventually released in 2020 as part of a prisoner swap. The Australian government described the allegations against her as "baseless". Last week, she took to social media to post a video of Israel's strike on the facility and wrote: "Every single person who has ever passed under these gates, or has been forced to stand outside them to film the regime's propaganda, will be staring in disbelief at these scenes." The anti-regime group Edaalate Ali hacked Evin Prison's CCTV cameras in 2021 and leaked the footage to expose human rights abuses taking place behind its walls. In a post on the encrypted messaging service Telegram after Israel's attack, the organisation claimed Iranian authorities were trying to stop friends and relatives of people locked inside the jail from accessing the area. "Let's break the chains of captivity together and free political prisoners," it wrote in one update, before encouraging people to head to the compound and help the inmates escape. The footage it leaked made international headlines, and documented inmates being sexually harassed and beaten, as well as overcrowded cells and incidents of self-harm. The videos were so shocking, even Iran's top prisons official, Mohammad Mehdi Haj Mohammadi, described the behaviour they uncovered as "unacceptable". Amnesty International has documented multiple types of torture used at Evin Prison, including "floggings, electric shocks, mock executions, waterboarding, sexual violence, suspension, force-feeding of chemical substances, and deliberate deprivation of medical care". Iranian-Kurdish rapper Saman Yasin was incarcerated at the facility for two years for taking part in Iran's 2022 uprising. He has since detailed a "mock execution" he was subjected to, in which he was taken to a set of gallows and read his last rights. "I was under that noose for about 15 minutes, I think," he told CNN earlier this year. "I could tell that they had brought in a cleric, and he was reciting the Quran over my head … and he kept telling me: 'Repent, so that you go to heaven'." One man, who was born in the jail, has told the ABC about visiting his parents there as a child. He said he remembered an "ugly green hallway" and being interrogated by guards before entering. Iranian officials have this month encouraged the country's judiciary to expedite trials for anyone accused of "collaborating" with Israel — something that would result in execution. Israel's decision to bomb the jail has been criticised by the sister of one of its inmates. French woman Neomie Kohler, whose sibling Cecile and her partner Jacques Paris have been incarcerated at Evin Prison since May 2022 on spying charges they deny, said the IDF's attack put innocent people "in mortal danger". "This strike is completely irresponsible," she told the AFP news agency, adding: "This is really the worst thing that could have happened. "We have no news, we don't know if they are still alive. We're panicking," Amit Segal, the chief political analyst for Israel's Channel 12 news, said in a post on social media that the strike on Evin Prison meant Benjamin Netanyahu's government "appears to be flirting with regime change" in Iran. "This is an escalation by Israel, as it is now targeting not just Iranian military sites, but also Iranian institutions that oppress their own people — and don't directly affect Israel," he wrote. Governments in both Israel and the US repeatedly claimed during the 12-day war that they were not trying to affect the downfall of Iran's government and its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Although US President Donald Trump did take to social media during the fighting to ask "if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why couldn't there be a Regime change???"
ABC News
2 hours ago
- ABC News
China forces young Tibetan children to indoctrination boarding schools to push state propaganda
Distressed Tibetan children as young as four sent to Chinese state-run boarding schools for indoctrination have been beaten for praying and wearing Buddhist blessing cords, forced to sleep on sheepskins and taught only in Mandarin, a new report has found. Researchers and activists say the boarding schools have been used by authorities to suppress the local culture and language of people in China's Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). Details of the violence and coercive indoctrination have emerged in a new report from the US-based Tibet Action Institute (TAI) titled When They Came To Take Our Children. Two Tibetans interviewed told the TAI that children were reprimanded for practising their religion. "Students are restricted from wearing any sungdue [Buddhist blessing cords] around their necks and wrists and chanting Tibetan prayers," the report says. A former student, who has left Tibet, told the TAI if school authorities inspected dormitories and "found that we had not kept it clean, we were beaten as a punishment". Along with the allegations of beatings, the report says Tibetan children are indoctrinated to praise the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and taught only in Mandarin. "It's an effort to move Tibetan children away from family and community … expanding its control over what they're learning and thinking," Freya Putt, the author of the report and TAI's Director of Strategy, says. The TAI said its research was based on rare firsthand accounts from people in Tibet, and with those who have recently fled — as well as Chinese news reports and research papers. Human Rights Watch Associate China Director Maya Wang said they too have gathered evidence of the CCP's enforcement of Mandarin instruction of Tibetan schoolchildren. "It's part of a bigger forced assimilation drive, where the intention is to punish any kind of expression of Tibetans that are not following the Chinese government script," she told the ABC. Chinese authorities have denied children have been mistreated, and have used state media to cast the schools in a far more positive light. TAI's previous research found that 800,000-900,000 Tibetan children aged 6-18 were living in state-run boarding schools. Fieldwork by educational sociologist Gyal Lo suggests another 100,000 aged four to six are also in boarding preschools. "Some people do not want to send their children to boarding school but they don't have any other choice," a Tibetan who recently fled is quoted as saying in the report. "Parents do not want their children to be illiterate, so with that hope they send their children to the schools. But when these children return home, they cannot speak in Tibetan with their family members, they only communicate in Chinese. Dr Lo said he had even seen this happen to his two grand-nieces. He described it as a "sort of cultural genocide", and that his grand-nieces seemed to be uncomfortable sharing the family's Tibetan identity. "They became a stranger at home," he said. "That's just the result of the three months in the boarding preschool." The TAI's report detailed terrible conditions in boarding preschools. A student teacher's online diary is quoted, describing how "children in the lower bunks were prevented from falling off by boards; children in the upper bunks were tied up with a strap. For nap time, children have to sleep with their heads on their desks". Another account from a Tibetan still in Tibet described how the young child of a friend was so distressed they had to be locked in a room so their parent could leave them at boarding school. "China is using Tibetan children as the final frontier on the battleground to eliminate the Tibetan identity language and the culture," Dr Lo said. Former UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, Fernand de Varennes, described these practices as an "existential threat" to Tibetan people. "Within two generations, if this situation does not improve, the language, much of the identity [and] culture will be lost," he said. Tibetan-Australian Yangkyi Dolma Sangpo, 25, attended a boarding school as a young child. Yangkyi's parents fled Tibet when she was only four months old. "My father, he got in trouble with the Chinese government because he was bringing Tibetan scriptures and Tibetan political texts from India back into Tibet," Yangkyi said. Her parents could not risk taking her on a month-long journey through the Himalaya mountains to India, she said. So she was left in the care of her grandmother. Yangkyi remembers being taught in Mandarin at school in the village where she lived with her grandmother. She said they did learn Tibetan "on the side", but the school was closed down when she was about six. She was then told she would have to go to a boarding school. At that school, students were strongly discouraged from speaking Tibetan or keeping possessions tied to Tibetan traditions, like prayer beads, she said. "We received a lot of bullying from other students who were there a long time … they were looking down on us," she said. At boarding school, Yangkyi said they were only taught Chinese culture and language. "We were not practising Tibetan religion or any other type of traditions," she said. Yangkyi remembers the culture shock when she returned home. "Because my grandmother and my extended family … they don't speak Mandarin, and me coming home [I was] completely speaking Mandarin all the time and correcting little words," she said. "Like if they said 'socks' in Tibetan, I'd be correcting them to say it in Mandarin." Yangkyi said she had a kidney condition as a young child. Her family used that as an excuse to keep her at home in the village instead of returning to the state-run boarding school. She eventually went to another privately run boarding school that taught Tibetan language and traditions. Then in 2010, Yangkyi was reunited with her parents who had been relocated to Australia on humanitarian grounds. Even outside of Tibet, people like Yangkyi and Dr Lo put themselves at great risk by speaking publicly about their experiences and research. When Dr Lo was recently in India, his father died. "My brothers and sister could not directly inform me that my dad passed away because they're afraid of Chinese authorities' intimidation," he said. Accounts from Tibet have been extremely difficult to verify. Yangkyi tried for months to get documents or photos from family still there, to help the ABC verify her story. But it was not possible without putting them at risk. Even chatting briefly with Yangkyi spooked one of her cousins. "He left me a note saying: 'Hey, I'll be MIA for a while, I don't want to get in trouble,'" she said. There have long been accusations and documentation of religious and cultural suppression in Tibet. In 1950, the then-newly proclaimed People's Republic of China sent troops into Tibet. It was annexed by China and after a failed uprising in 1959 the Dalai Lama — Tibet's spiritual leader — fled to India, where he set up a government in exile that still exists. Tibetans living overseas say communication with relatives is limited, and there is great risk talking about anything political or controversial. People in Tibet are also routinely restricted from travelling and being issued passports, according to the Central Tibetan Administration, the India-based government in exile. Foreign journalists and officials are rarely allowed into the region. The US State Department's East Asia and Pacific bureau stated in May that five requests in 2024 and three in 2023 by American officials to visit were rejected. Diplomats visiting Tibetan areas outside the TAR are subject to "conspicuous surveillance to intimidate, monitor, harass, and restrict [their] movements", it says. It says the TAR is the only part of China its officials need to formally request permission to visit. The ABC has made repeated requests to visit Tibet to report on the devastating earthquake in January, which killed at least 120 people. They were all denied, with officials citing safety concerns. The CCP has mobilised its media outlets to portray the schools in a positive way. A video posted on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, by China Tibet Net — a state media outlet — shows children in class, playing outside, conducting chemistry experiments and dancing. The description emphasises that enrolment in the boarding school system was voluntary, and students received free food and accommodation with tuition in both Tibetan and Mandarin. There was another video posted by The Tibet Daily, the official newspaper of the CCP's Tibet Autonomous Region Committee. It features footage said to be from foreign media reports, accusing them of spreading fake information about boarding schools. In the video, two Chinese reporters visit a school in Tibet where a teacher tells them they give classes in Tibetan language, culture and dancing. The video says the boarding schools are the only way to provide high quality education in such a large and sparsely populated region. In 2020, China's State Council introduced measures aimed at "promoting and popularising the national common language and script", with policies encouraging teachers from other regions to support teaching in Tibet and improve Chinese proficiency among local teachers. There was no requirement for teachers to have Tibetan language skills, according to a 2024/2025 recruitment document issued by the Shenzhen Municipal Education Bureau. Zoe Bedford from the Australia Tibet Council said her organisation had asked the Australian government to sanction Chinese government officials responsible for Tibet's boarding schools. "We get the reply back that the government raises the issue of these colonial boarding schools publicly and privately in their conversations with Chinese officials," Ms Bedford said. A Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesperson said they would not speculate about potential sanctions. "The Australian government has serious concerns about the erosion of educational, religious, linguistic, and cultural rights in Tibet, including through the boarding school system," it said in a statement. In October, Australia's ambassador to the United Nations, James Larsen, raised concerns about the "separation of children from families in boarding schools; and erosion of linguistic, cultural, educational and religious rights and freedoms". The ABC contacted China's Embassy in Canberra for a response. Professor de Varennes, the former UN special rapporteur, called on UN institutions and democratic countries to do more.
News.com.au
5 hours ago
- News.com.au
UK govt condemns 'death to the IDF' chants at Glastonbury
A British punk-rap group faced growing criticism on Sunday for making anti-Israel remarks at the Glastonbury music festival that have sparked a police inquiry. Bob Vylan led crowds in chants of "Death, death to the IDF", a reference to the acronym for the Israeli military, during their set on Saturday. British police officers are also examining comments by the Irish rap trio Kneecap, whose members have likewise been highly critical of Israel and its military campaign against the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. One of Kneecap's members wore a T-shirt dedicated to the Palestine Action Group, which is about to be banned under UK terror laws. The UK government has "strongly condemned" Bob Vylan's chants, which festival organisers said had "very much crossed a line". "We are urgently reminding everyone involved in the production of the festival that there is no place at Glastonbury for antisemitism, hate speech or incitement to violence," the festival said in a statement. Avon and Somerset police said Saturday that video evidence would be assessed by officers "to determine whether any offences may have been committed that would require a criminal investigation". - 'Life is sacred' - The chants about Israel's military, condemned by the Israeli embassy in London, were led by Bob Vylan's frontman Bobby Vylan. They were broadcast live on the BBC, which airs coverage of Britain's most popular music festival. "I thought it's appalling, to be honest," Wes Streeting, the Labour's government's health secretary, said of the chants, adding that "all life is sacred". "I think the BBC and Glastonbury have got questions to answer about how we saw such a spectacle on our screens," he told Sky News. The Israel embassy said in a statement late Saturday that "it was "deeply disturbed by the inflammatory and hateful rhetoric expressed on stage at the Glastonbury Festival". But Streeting also took aim at the embassy, telling it to "get your own house in order". "I think there's a serious point there by the Israeli embassy. I wish they'd take the violence of their own citizens towards Palestinians more seriously," he said, citing Israeli settler violence in the West Bank. A spokesperson for the BBC said Vylan's comments were "deeply offensive" and the broadcaster had "no plans" to make the performance available on its on-demand service. Festival-goer Joe McCabe, 31, told AFP that while he did not necessarily agree with Vylan's statement, "I certainly think the message of questioning what's going on there (in Gaza) is right." - 'A joke' - Kneecap, which has made headlines in recent months with its pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel stance, also led crowds in chanting abuse against UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Starmer and other politicians had said the band should not perform after its member Liam O'Hanna, known by his stage name Mo Chara, was charged with a terror offence. He appeared in court this month accused of having displayed a Hezbollah flag while saying "Up Hamas, Up Hezbollah" after a video resurfaced of a London concert last year. The Iran-backed Lebanese force Hezbollah and the Palestinian militant group Hamas are banned in the UK, and it is an offence to express support for them. O'Hanna has denied the charge and told the Guardian newspaper in an interview published Friday that "it was a joke -- we're playing characters". Kneecap regularly lead crowds in chants of "Free Palestine" during its concerts, and fans revere them for their anti-establishment stance and criticism of British imperialism, while detractors call them extremists. The group apologised this year after a 2023 video emerged appearing to show one singer calling for the death of British Conservative lawmakers. Israel began its offensive against Hamas in the Palestinian territory of Gaza after the militants launched an attack that resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures. Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 56,412 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to Hamas-run territory's health ministry. The United Nations considers these figures to be reliable.
