Latest news with #CountryReportsonHumanRightsPractices
HKFP
a day ago
- Politics
- HKFP
‘Despicable': Beijing's office slams 2024 US report on ‘significant human rights issues' in Hong Kong
The Chinese foreign ministry office in Hong Kong has expressed its 'firm opposition' to a US report that found 'significant human rights issues' in the city last year. The US State Department's 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, published on Tuesday, contained 'fabricated false claims' about the human rights and rule-of-law situation in Hong Kong, the Commissioner's Office of China's Foreign Ministry in Hong Kong said in a statement on Wednesday evening. The US report highlighted the passage of the homegrown Safeguarding National Security Ordinance – better known as Article 23 – in March 2024. The US Department of State said it had broadened the scope and definition of sedition offences and granted Hong Kong authorities 'much wider scope to detain and arrest individuals for political purposes.' The report also cited 'arbitrary arrest and detention' and 'transnational repression against individuals outside of Hong Kong.' It found 'serious restrictions' on free speech, pointing to the first round of Article 23 arrests, which involved jailed Tiananmen crackdown activist Chow Hang-tung and those who managed her social media pages. It added that the operating space for independent media 'shrank further' last year, citing visa denials faced by foreign journalists in recent years, as well as the first sedition case ruling involving the media, when a Hong Kong court convicted and jailed former editors of the defunct Stand News in August. In response, the Chinese foreign ministry office in Hong Kong said the crackdown on activities endangering national security was a 'legitimate measure' and trials in the city were 'impartial.' The US was 'rehashing' cases involving 'anti-China, destabilising forces in Hong Kong' and openly supporting them, the spokesperson said. They urged the US to stop interfering in Hong Kong's affairs and to respect China's sovereignty and the city's rule of law. 'This fully exposes the US's politicisation and instrumentalisation of human rights issues, as well as its sinister attempt to use Hong Kong to contain China's development — an act that is despicable,' the Commissioner's Office statement read. Separate from the 2020 Beijing-enacted security law, the homegrown Safeguarding National Security Ordinance targets treason, insurrection, sabotage, external interference, sedition, theft of state secrets and espionage. It allows for pre-charge detention of up to 16 days, and suspects' access to lawyers may be restricted, with penalties involving up to life in prison. Article 23 was shelved in 2003 amid mass protests, remaining taboo for years. But, on March 23, 2024, it was enacted having been fast-tracked and unanimously approved at the city's opposition-free legislature. The law has been criticised by rights NGOs, Western states and the UN as vague, broad and 'regressive.' Authorities, however, cited perceived foreign interference and a constitutional duty to 'close loopholes' after the 2019 protests and unrest.
The Intercept
7 days ago
- Politics
- The Intercept
Trump Orders State Department to Overlook International Human Rights Abuses
The State Department is gutting its human rights reporting by excising information detailing abuses by foreign governments from the department's annual reports, The Intercept has learned. Officially called 'Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,' the annual documents are required by law to be a 'a full and complete report regarding the status of internationally recognized human rights' in nearly 200 countries and territories worldwide. They are used 'by the U.S. Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches as a resource for shaping policy and guiding decisions, informing diplomatic engagements, and determining the allocation of foreign aid and security sector assistance,' according to the State Department. The reports will no longer call out governments for abuses like restrictions on free and fair elections, significant corruption, or serious harassment of domestic or international human rights organizations, according to instructions issued earlier this year to the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) which, itself, has been eviscerated under an 'America First' reorganization by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The undated memo from earlier this year, reviewed by The Intercept, says the reports will also turn a blind eye to the forcible expulsion of refugees or asylum-seekers to countries where they may face torture or persecution. This comes as the Trump administration is building a global gulag, pursuing deals with around a third of the world's nations to expel immigrants to places where they do not hold citizenship. Once exiled, these so-called 'third-country nationals' are sometimes detained, imprisoned, or in danger of being sent back to their country of origin — which they may have fled to escape violence, torture, or political persecution. A recent Intercept investigation found that the nations that the Trump administration is collaborating with to accept expelled 'third country' immigrants are some of the worst human rights offenders on the planet, according to last year's State Department human rights reports. The new country reports, expected to be released within days, will effectively launder abuses by nations that the administration is targeting as potential deportee dumping grounds. The memo also instructs the agency to 'identify and delete references to discrimination or violence against 'LGBTQI+' persons, 'transgender' persons, or similar framing.' 'People will suffer. Immigration courts in the United States and asylum claim adjudicators around the world look at these reports for guidance.' 'Donald Trump has made it his personal mission to limit transparency and accountability, and the State Department's upcoming human rights report — or what remains of it — will certainly reflect that,' Senator Peter Welch, D-Vt., told The Intercept. 'He's more concerned with denying human rights here and abroad, and cozying up to dictators and authoritarian leaders, than he is with fighting for those who need it most.' The State Department did not respond to repeated questions from The Intercept regarding the human rights reports. Annelle Sheline, who served as a Foreign Affairs Officer in DRL's Office of Near Eastern Affairs until last year and previously worked on annual country human rights reports, expects the forthcoming documents to be completely hollowed out. In conversations with former colleagues, she heard that a working draft on human rights in Egypt, which in past versions has run 70 or 80 pages, had been slashed down to only 20 pages. She said she heard that a 60-page Tunisia draft report submitted early this year had been stripped down to just 15 pages. The instructions to DRL issued earlier this year take specific aim at non-refoulement — derived from a French word for return — which forbids sending people to places where they are at risk of harm. It is a bedrock principle of international human rights, refugee, and customary international law, and is embedded in U.S. domestic law. State Department employees were specifically instructed that the upcoming country reports should 'remove any reference' to 'refoulment of persons to a country where they would face torture or persecution,' according to the memo. State Department officials did not respond to repeated questions by The Intercept concerning the role the Trump administration's own third-country deportations played in the new directive. Experts say that watering down the human rights reports will cause real harm. 'People will suffer. Immigration courts in the United States and asylum claim adjudicators around the world look at these reports for guidance. If you redefine what persecution looks like in a particular country or what fear of retribution means, it can do real damage to real people,' said Amanda Klasing, national director of government relations and advocacy with Amnesty International USA. 'The U.S. government has an obligation of non-refoulment – that is to ensure it isn't sending or deporting people back to torture,' Klasing said. 'If theTrump administration ignores or rewrites the extent to which torture or other threatening conditions are happening in a country, it can create at least the façade of plausible deniability of allowing refoulement for individuals it is deporting, and that's dangerous.' More than 8,100 people have been expelled to third countries since January 20, and the U.S. has made arrangements to send people to at least 13 nations, so far, across the globe. Of them, 12 have been cited by the State Department for significant human rights abuses. But the Trump administration has cast a much wider net for its third-country deportations. The U.S. has solicited 64 nations to participate in its growing network of detainee dumping grounds for expelled immigrants. Fifty-eight of them — roughly 91 percent — were rebuked for human rights violations in last year's State Department human rights reports. The newest additions to America's global gulag are among the least free countries on the planet. Last month, the administration expelled five men — from Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Vietnam, and Yemen — to the Southern African kingdom of Eswatini, an absolute monarchy with a dismal human rights record. The move closely followed the U.S. deportation of eight men to violence-plagued South Sudan, one of the most repressive nations in the world. The State Department's 2024 assessment of South Sudan catalogs an enormous range of serious abuses, including reports of extrajudicial killings; disappearances by or on behalf of government authorities; and instances in which 'security forces mutilated, tortured, beat, and harassed political opponents, journalists, and human rights activists.' The human rights report on Eswatini from last year refers to credible reports of arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings; torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; and the incarceration of political prisoners. Experts emphasize that the State Department's record on calling out human rights violations has been imperfect at best – and has suffered a severe crisis of credibility over Israel's war in Gaza. Still, even critics have commended the DRL's annual reports. Sheline, who resigned in March 2024 to protest the Biden administration's support for Israel's war in Gaza, referenced the longtime disconnect between the State Department's rhetoric and action in terms of human rights and its selective outrage over violations. 'All that said, there still was a certain expectation there that the United States cared about human rights. So now to have totally abandoned that is significant,' she told The Intercept, noting that even last year's report on Israel's human rights abuses 'was pretty damning, even with some material stripped out of it.' Sheline added: 'What we would hear on the ground in foreign countries is that the reports mattered to human rights groups who could point out to their governments that the 'United States is watching you.' Even if it didn't impact U. S. policy, it still carried the weight of a U.S. government document.' Josh Paul, who spent more than 11 years as the director of congressional and public affairs at the State Department bureau that oversees arms transfers to foreign nations before resigning in 2023 over U.S. military assistance to Israel, echoed these sentiments. 'For all the failings of the U.S. government when it comes to policy decisions, the Human Rights Report has long been a key and trusted annual snapshot of the state of global human rights whose conclusions, although often hard-fought within the bureaucracy, have rarely pulled their punches,' he said. 'Sadly, that is not what we expect this year, in which it is clear that Secretary Rubio has demanded a more politicized approach that will result in a report that lacks credibility.' Last Friday, a group of senators including Welch introduced the Safeguarding the Integrity of Human Rights Reports Act,which aims to 'ensure that the Department of State's annual Country Reports on Human Rights remain robust and free from political influence' and mandate inclusion of abuses that the Trump administration ordered DRL to strip away like restrictions on participation in the political process and violence or discrimination against LGBTQI+ individuals, persons with disabilities and indigenous people, among others. 'The original purpose of these reports is to inform Congress about how to ensure taxpayer funding is not going to countries that undermine human rights,' said Klasing. 'It's a check on the executive. It's Congress holding the president – any president – accountable to making good long-term human rights-centered decisions instead of short-term diplomatic wins.'
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
How the Trump Administration May Redefine Human Rights
Secretary of State Marco Rubio sits nearby as U.S. President Donald Trump meets with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador in the Oval Office of the White House on April 14, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit - Win McNamee—Getty Images Every spring, since the late 1970s, the State Department has released the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. This year, those waiting for these documents will have to hold on a bit longer. The Trump Administration is upending decades of precedence to substantially revise the reports. The 2024 version of the reports were initially completed before President Donald Trump took office, but are now being re-edited. When they are released, these reports will now reportedly exclude information on issues such as government efforts to deny freedom of movement and peaceful assembly, failures to retain or provide due process for political prisoners, and the harassment of human rights organizations. The Trump Administration has also signaled it will cut sections about the rights of women, the disabled, and the LGBTQ+ community. These Country Reports offer a detailed account of the state of every country's human rights practices and are meant to inform congressional decisions on foreign aid allocations and security assistance. The reports have taken on added importance over the years. They're increasingly used as a tool to pressure governments to improve their practices, while advocacy organizations and lawyers rely on them to aid in asylum cases and demonstrate fear of persecution. By revising and cutting out substantial sections addressing an array of rights concerns that the U.S. has cared about for almost five decades, the Trump Administration is undermining the definition of human rights as a concept. These State Department reports were first introduced at a key moment in U.S. human rights history—although they did not arrive without controversy. As human rights grew as an important organizing concept in the 1960s and the 1970s around the world, U.S. presidents were largely resistant to incorporating it into U.S. foreign policy decision-making. President Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford's powerful Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, encapsulated this opposition by claiming that taking into account morality or human rights in foreign policy was 'totally devoid of contacts with reality and would lead to empty posturing.' Instead, Kissinger's State Department was dominated by Cold War concerns that relied on a realist approach to foreign policy and focused on great power politics that eschewed concerns like human rights. U.S. Added to Global Human Rights Watchlist Over Declining Civil Liberties In response, as historian Barbara Keys has outlined, Congress tried to pressure State Department officials to reconsider, passing legislation that tied foreign aid to human rights criteria. One important provision that Congress approved was Section 502B of the 1974 Foreign Assistance Act, which, among other measures, requires the Secretary of State to provide annual human rights reports. The reports were one of the first steps by the U.S. government to collect and monitor human rights practices in countries around the globe. It allowed Congress to identify 'gross violators of human rights' and then cut off funding. That authority alone helped the government bring attention to rights issues, educate the public, and apply diplomatic pressure. But the reports were contentious from the beginning. Regional bureaus in the State Department hotly debated what should and should not be included or classified. Some of the first reports were notably restrained in the documentation of abuses, especially compared to the language human rights advocacy groups used to describe violations. Meanwhile, Kissinger remained inflexible in his position, refusing to provide Congress with the reports in 1975. Instead, he only issued an overview of the state of global human rights without determining each country's abuses. The following year, Congress responded by strengthening the reporting provision, requiring that 'a full and complete report' be given to Congress 'with respect to practices regarding the observance of and respect for internationally recognized human rights in each country proposed as a recipient of security assistance.' The reports took on new meaning under President Jimmy Carter's administration. Often considered the 'first human rights president,' Carter and his Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, declassified and publicized these reports, using them to inform policy decisions. Carter broke with a long line of presidents who claimed ignorance about abuses in other countries, seeking to draw lessons from the documentation of such abuses abroad, and using reports to inform decisions about aid and to provide the State Department and advocacy groups with leverage for securing human rights around the globe. President Ronald Reagan, more forceful in his Cold War aims and, like Kissinger, wary of human rights considerations, still adhered to the State Department human rights reporting requirements. While initially using the reports to downplay concerns about violations of social and economic rights, by the latter part of his second term in office, his administration's Country Reports criticized even ally regimes, such as Chile. The administration also used the reports to highlight its goals of democracy promotion, a strategy that aligned with its Cold War policies. By the early 1990s, and with the end of the Cold War, these reports expanded in scope and institutionalized human rights into the practices of the State Department. As political scientist Kathryn Sikkink has argued, the reports required that 'at least one foreign service officer in every embassy around the globe' had to gather systematic information on human rights issues as part of their jobs. Over the decade, the reports grew more detailed, expansive, and accurate, which has made them vital to so many groups in the 21st century. Tracing the emergence of these reports demonstrates that Trump is hardly the first president to politicize his legal responsibility to Congress through its State Department reporting requirements. Debates about what and how much to include in these reports emerged in the first years of the legislative onus and has continued to varying degrees with presidents ever since. Civil and Human Rights Organizations Sue Trump Administration Over DEI, Gender Orders The difference today lays in the scope and scaling back of the current president's vision of human rights. During his first term in office, Trump tried to redefine human rights through then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's Commission on Unalienable Rights, which focused on pairing human rights with religious freedom and decoupling it from reproductive rights. The State Department also sought to pare back Country Reports on abortion and contraceptive issues as well as racial, ethnic, and sexual discrimination. Since January 2025, though, the Trump Administration has not just sought to downplay or deprioritize human rights, but rather to redefine the concept completely. Reporting on impending changes notes that any reference to LGBTQ+ rights is absent. Sections on the ability or right for minorities to participate in the political process, and freedom of expression for citizens, also could be cut. Parts of the report that describe prison conditions are expected to be erased, and corruption in government, especially in administrations friendly to the president, including that of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, may be nixed as well. In essence, the Trump Administration may fulfill its congressional mandate, but only minimally and with implied disregard for the now-internationally recognized idea of human rights. In the aftermath of these potential revisions being leaked, Amnesty International USA raised the alarm, declaring that the shifts signaled that the United States is no longer going to uphold—or hold other countries accountable for upholding—human rights. Along with this stark warning, the history of these reports shows how activists have found ways to raise awareness about human rights around the world. Debbie Sharnak is Assistant Professor of History and International Studies at Rowan University, the author of Of Light and Struggle: Social Justice, Human Rights, and Accountability in Uruguay, and the co-editor of Uruguay in Transnational Perspective. Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors. Write to Made by History at madebyhistory@
Time Magazine
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Time Magazine
The Trump Administration is Trying to Change the Historical Definition of Human Rights
Every spring, since the late 1970s, the State Department has released the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. This year, those waiting for these documents will have to hold on a bit longer. The Trump Administration is upending decades of precedence to substantially revise the reports. The 2024 version of the reports were initially completed before President Donald Trump took office, but are now being re-edited. When they are released, these reports will now reportedly exclude information on issues such as government efforts to deny freedom of movement and peaceful assembly, failures to retain or provide due process for political prisoners, and the harassment of human rights organizations. The Trump Administration has also signaled it will cut sections about the rights of women, the disabled, and the LGBTQ+ community. These Country Reports offer a detailed account of the state of every country's human rights practices and are meant to inform congressional decisions on foreign aid allocations and security assistance. The reports have taken on added importance over the years. They're increasingly used as a tool to pressure governments to improve their practices, while advocacy organizations and lawyers rely on them to aid in asylum cases and demonstrate fear of persecution. By revising and cutting out substantial sections addressing an array of rights concerns that the U.S. has cared about for almost five decades, the Trump Administration is undermining the definition of human rights as a concept. These State Department reports were first introduced at a key moment in U.S. human rights history—although they did not arrive without controversy. As human rights grew as an important organizing concept in the 1960s and the 1970s around the world, U.S. presidents were largely resistant to incorporating it into U.S. foreign policy decision-making. President Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford's powerful Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, encapsulated this opposition by claiming that taking into account morality or human rights in foreign policy was 'totally devoid of contacts with reality and would lead to empty posturing.' Instead, Kissinger's State Department was dominated by Cold War concerns that relied on a realist approach to foreign policy and focused on great power politics that eschewed concerns like human rights. In response, as historian Barbara Keys has outlined, Congress tried to pressure State Department officials to reconsider, passing legislation that tied foreign aid to human rights criteria. One important provision that Congress approved was Section 502B of the 1974 Foreign Assistance Act, which, among other measures, requires the Secretary of State to provide annual human rights reports. The reports were one of the first steps by the U.S. government to collect and monitor human rights practices in countries around the globe. It allowed Congress to identify 'gross violators of human rights' and then cut off funding. That authority alone helped the government bring attention to rights issues, educate the public, and apply diplomatic pressure. But the reports were contentious from the beginning. Regional bureaus in the State Department hotly debated what should and should not be included or classified. Some of the first reports were notably restrained in the documentation of abuses, especially compared to the language human rights advocacy groups used to describe violations. Meanwhile, Kissinger remained inflexible in his position, refusing to provide Congress with the reports in 1975. Instead, he only issued an overview of the state of global human rights without determining each country's abuses. The following year, Congress responded by strengthening the reporting provision, requiring that 'a full and complete report' be given to Congress 'with respect to practices regarding the observance of and respect for internationally recognized human rights in each country proposed as a recipient of security assistance.' The reports took on new meaning under President Jimmy Carter's administration. Often considered the 'first human rights president,' Carter and his Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, declassified and publicized these reports, using them to inform policy decisions. Carter broke with a long line of presidents who claimed ignorance about abuses in other countries, seeking to draw lessons from the documentation of such abuses abroad, and using reports to inform decisions about aid and to provide the State Department and advocacy groups with leverage for securing human rights around the globe. President Ronald Reagan, more forceful in his Cold War aims and, like Kissinger, wary of human rights considerations, still adhered to the State Department human rights reporting requirements. While initially using the reports to downplay concerns about violations of social and economic rights, by the latter part of his second term in office, his administration's Country Reports criticized even ally regimes, such as Chile. The administration also used the reports to highlight its goals of democracy promotion, a strategy that aligned with its Cold War policies. By the early 1990s, and with the end of the Cold War, these reports expanded in scope and institutionalized human rights into the practices of the State Department. As political scientist Kathryn Sikkink has argued, the reports required that 'at least one foreign service officer in every embassy around the globe' had to gather systematic information on human rights issues as part of their jobs. Over the decade, the reports grew more detailed, expansive, and accurate, which has made them vital to so many groups in the 21st century. Tracing the emergence of these reports demonstrates that Trump is hardly the first president to politicize his legal responsibility to Congress through its State Department reporting requirements. Debates about what and how much to include in these reports emerged in the first years of the legislative onus and has continued to varying degrees with presidents ever since. The difference today lays in the scope and scaling back of the current president's vision of human rights. During his first term in office, Trump tried to redefine human rights through then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's Commission on Unalienable Rights, which focused on pairing human rights with religious freedom and decoupling it from reproductive rights. The State Department also sought to pare back Country Reports on abortion and contraceptive issues as well as racial, ethnic, and sexual discrimination. Since January 2025, though, the Trump Administration has not just sought to downplay or deprioritize human rights, but rather to redefine the concept completely. Reporting on impending changes notes that any reference to LGBTQ+ rights is absent. Sections on the ability or right for minorities to participate in the political process, and freedom of expression for citizens, also could be cut. Parts of the report that describe prison conditions are expected to be erased, and corruption in government, especially in administrations friendly to the president, including that of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, may be nixed as well. In essence, the Trump Administration may fulfill its congressional mandate, but only minimally and with implied disregard for the now-internationally recognized idea of human rights. In the aftermath of these potential revisions being leaked, Amnesty International USA raised the alarm, declaring that the shifts signaled that the United States is no longer going to uphold—or hold other countries accountable for upholding—human rights. Along with this stark warning, the history of these reports shows how activists have found ways to raise awareness about human rights around the world. Debbie Sharnak is Assistant Professor of History and International Studies at Rowan University, the author of Of Light and Struggle: Social Justice, Human Rights, and Accountability in Uruguay, and the co-editor of Uruguay in Transnational Perspective.
Axios
22-04-2025
- Politics
- Axios
State Department reorganization impacts bureaus with human rights focus
Secretary of State Marco Rubio unveiled a new organizational chart for his department Tuesday in what he called an effort to "drain the bloated, bureaucratic swamp." The big picture: The reorganization Rubio outlined targeted some bureaus with a focus on human rights. Spokesperson Tammy Bruce said at Tuesday's briefing that the department is "reversing decades of bloat and bureaucracy." But she emphasized that "this is a reorganization plan — it is not something where people are being fired today." Yes, but: "Redundant offices" will be eliminated, Rubio wrote in a State Department Substack post Tuesday. He said "non-statutory programs misaligned with America's core national interests will cease to exist." The New York Times reported that an internal fact sheet from the department stated that part of Rubio's plan is to reduce the agency's total offices from 734 to 602. Zoom in: Rubio said that the "expansive domain" of the former under secretary for civilian security, human rights, and democracy "provided a fertile environment for activists to redefine 'human rights' and 'democracy.'" Its bureaus and offices, he said, would be placed under a new coordinator "charged with returning them to their original mission of advancing human rights and religious freedom, not promoting radical causes at taxpayer expense." Asked Tuesday about the apparent disappearance of the Office of Global Criminal Justice from the updated organizational chart, Bruce said that because a bureau is folded into another larger bureau, it "doesn't mean that it's gone or we don't care." She later added, "If you don't see it on the chart, it may be moved." Transferring remaining USAID functions"to such a monstrosity of bureaus would be to undo DOGE's work to build a more efficient and accountable government," Rubio said in his Tuesday post. He additionally said the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor was used by "left-wing activists to wage vendettas against 'anti-woke' leaders in nations such as Poland, Hungary, and Brazil" and to promote an arms embargo on Israel. Context: While Rubio accused activists of redefining human rights, multiple outlets recently reported that the Trump administration would scale back the department's annual reports on international human rights to only what is required by law. Sections on LGBTQ+ rights, issues faced by women and challenges for people with disabilities will be trimmed, Politico reported. A Department official told Fox News the changes to the 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices are "critical for removing report redundancy, increasing readability, maintaining consistency to U.S. statutes, and returning focus to human rights issues rather than political bias."
