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Los Angeles Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
If Haiti has become more violent, why end Haitians' temporary protected status in the U.S.?
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced last month that temporary protected status for about 5,000 Haitians would end Sept. 2, five months earlier than planned. The Trump administration has cited flawed and contradictory assessments of conditions in Haiti — which, make no mistake, remains unsafe. Although a U.S. district court halted the action — at least temporarily — and reinstated the original termination date of Feb. 3, the administration is likely to challenge the ruling. The outcome of such a challenge could hinge on whether the courts receive and believe an accurate representation of current events in Haiti. The administration asserts that 'overall, country conditions have improved to the point where Haitians can return home in safety.' Nothing could be further from the truth. But few outsiders are entering and leaving the country lately, so the truth can be hard to ascertain. In late April and early May, as a researcher for Human Rights Watch, I traveled to the northern city of Cap-Haïtien. For the first time in the several years I have been working in Haiti, violence kept me from reaching the capital, Port-au-Prince, where the airport remains under a Federal Aviation Administration ban since November when gangs shot Spirit, JetBlue and American Airlines passenger jets in flight. In Cap-Haïtien, I spoke with dozens of people who fled the capital and other towns in recent months. Many shared accounts of killings, injuries from stray bullets and gang rapes by criminal group members. 'We were walking toward school when we saw the bandits shooting at houses, at people, at everything that moved,' a 27-year-old woman, a student from Port-au-Prince, told me. 'We started to run back, but that's when [my sister] Guerline fell face down. She was shot in the back of the head, then I saw [my cousin] Alice shot in the chest.' The student crawled under a car, where she hid for hours. She fled the capital in early January. This rampant violence is precisely the sort of conditions Congress had in mind when it passed the temporary protected status law in 1990. It recognized a gap in protection for situations in which a person might not be able to establish that they have been targeted for persecution on the basis of their beliefs or identity — the standard for permanent asylum claims — but rather when a person's life is at real risk because of high levels of generalized violence that make it too dangerous for anyone to be returned to the place. When an administration grants this designation, it does so for a defined period, which can be extended based on conditions in the recipients' home country. For instance, protected status for people from Somalia was first designated in 1991 and has been extended repeatedly, most recently through March 17, 2026. Almost 1.3 million people are internally displaced in Haiti. They flee increasing violence by criminal groups that killed more than 5,600 people in 2024 — 23% more than in 2023. Some analysts say the country has the highest homicide rate in the world. Criminal groups control nearly 90% of the capital and have expanded into other places. Perversely, the Department of Homeland Security publicly concedes this reality, citing in a Federal Register notification 'widespread gang violence' as a reason for terminating temporary protected status. The government argues that a 'breakdown in governance' makes Haiti unable to control migration, and so a continued designation to protect people from there would not be in the 'national interests' of the United States. Even judging on that criterion alone, revoking the legal status of Haitians in the U.S. is a bad idea. Sending half a million people into Haiti would be highly destabilizing and counter to U.S. interests — not to mention that their lives would be at risk. The Trump administration has taken no meaningful action to improve Haiti's situation. The Kenya-led multinational security support mission, authorized by the U.N. Security Council and initially backed by the United States, has been on the ground for a year. Yet because of severe shortages of personnel, resources and funding, it has failed to provide the support the Haitian police desperately need. In late February, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres recommended steps to strengthen the mission, but the Security Council has yet to act. The humanitarian situation in Haiti continues to deteriorate. An estimated 6 million people need humanitarian assistance. Nearly 5.7 million face acute hunger. On June 26, just one day before Homeland Security's attempt to end Haitians' protected status prematurely, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau described the ongoing crisis in Haiti as 'disheartening.' He said that 'public order has all but collapsed' as 'Haiti descends into chaos.' Two days earlier, the U.S. Embassy in Haiti issued a security alert urging U.S. citizens in the country to 'depart as soon as possible.' These are not indications that 'country conditions have improved to the point where Haitians can return home in safety,' as Homeland Security claimed on June 27. The decision to prematurely end temporary protected status is utterly disconnected from reality. The Trump administration itself has warned that Haiti remains dangerous — and if anything has become more so in recent months. The U.S. government should continue to protect Haitians now living in the United States from being thrown into the brutal violence unfolding in their home country. Nathalye Cotrino is a senior Americas researcher at Human Rights Watch.
NDTV
3 days ago
- NDTV
Why Radhika Yadav Case Should Force Us To Redefine 'Honour' Killings
The phrase 'honour killing' is so limitedly defined in our society and culture that the mere mention of these words provokes a certain fixed image in the listener/reader's mind. A dusty road in Haryana or Rajasthan. A couple, running fast. The girl is in tears, the boy, fiercely determined, as he tries to outrun the SUVs chasing them. But fate catches up, the usually upper-caste Hindu girl and the generally lower caste or non-Hindu boy are caught. The patriarch of the girl's family says something about honour and pride and maligning the family name, and then they are shot dead. The family returns home, having reclaimed their 'honour'. Until - if at all - the ever-diligent police catches them and teaches them a lesson about how there was no honour in this crime, it is often too late. Alas, the world is not a fictional show, and this definition of honour killing is way too limiting to exemplify what lies at the core of this philosophy: controlling or denying the agency of a girl or a woman. The horrendous and bone-chilling murder of Radhika Yadav, a rising tennis coach, at the hands of her own father underlines the need to broaden the definition of honour killing. Where Is The 'Honour'? Human Rights Watch describes the act as follows: "an honour killing is the murder or acts of violence against a (typically female) family or clan member at the hand of a (typically male) family member in which the perpetrators believe that they brought shame upon the clan, community, or family." The reasons for a female member of the clan/family to be targeted could include choosing love, refusing arranged marriages, being the victim of a sexual assault (yes, truly. By being a victim, the woman inadvertently brings shame to the family). But this definition, once again, doesn't go deeper into the issue of patriarchy's need to control female agency. Yadav, a 25-year-old tennis player, who later became a coach after a shoulder injury, ran her own tennis academy in Haryana. One morning, in the supposed safety of her own Gurugram home, she was shot at five times by her father, Deepak Yadav. She was cooking breakfast for him at the time, ironically. Four bullets hit her, three in the back, one in the shoulder. Her father allegedly told the police then that he was tired of the taunts by his fellow villagers, who laughed at him for having a financially independent daughter who had 'too much freedom'. Beyond Caste And Religion There is an apparent cycle of the usual patriarchal pressures. Radhika's tennis buddy and friend, Himaanshika Singh Rajput, has accused Deepak of "controlling" every aspect of her life. In a social media post, she lamented the loss of her friend and claimed that the father continuously shamed her for wearing shorts, talking to boys, and living life on her own terms. This last part lies at the heart of 'honour killings'. A woman who dares to exercise some agency is like a glitch in the matrix of patriarchy that needs immediate debugging. To elaborate, around July 8 or 9, two men on a bike tried to throw a heavy sack under a flyover in Ludhiana. When some passers-by objected, they were first told it's rotten mangoes, and then, that it was a dog's corpse. The only thing rotten there was the lie. In the sack was the body of 25-year-old Reshma, a woman from Lucknow who came to Ludhiana to stay with her in-laws. The police quickly tracked the killers: her in-laws. During the interrogation, they allegedly confessed that Reshma was not very obedient, that she would often go out without their permission even at night, and that this led to constant friction at home. There is no love, affair, or the usual elements of an 'honour killing', but only an untameable daughter-in-law, proclaimed by our society to carry the burden of the whole clan's honour. So, the in-laws strangled her to death. The mother-in-law was simply a complacent tool in this whole saga. The Role Of Women In an academic paper titled Men And Women As Victims And Perpetrators Of Violence, professor Mahima Varma's insights into how women, too, become 'honour killers' of other women and girls, can help us understand the above two cases. I say two because Radhika's mother, Jyoti, was in the house at the time of her murder, but she claims she didn't hear anything. So far, she has also refused to make an official statement to the police. Coming back to the paper, the author says, "Women's complicity or silence in caste-based killings stems not only from ideological socialisation but also from economic dependence on male kin. Across generations, women (such as mothers, grandmothers and aunts) internalise patriarchal and caste norms, making them passive or active participants in violence." Financial dependence is a great tool to control the agency of a woman in our current societal structure. Since Radhika was independent, she became an outlier against this norm. As revealed in her chats with her coach, Radhika was fed up with the constant power struggle at home, where her father was increasingly frustrated about her 'free life'. Radhika wanted to escape, move to another country, as revealed in these chats. But that would deeply impact the family; a man already tired of the taunts of the villagers worried about what they would have said if they found out the daughter had severed ties with the family unit. That people have turned Radhika's case into a Hindu-Muslim debate on social media only shows how narrow our definition of honour killing is. People need to confirm their biases; many believe Deepak did an honourable thing by honour killing a daughter who must have had relations with a Muslim boy. He is being valourised online in a sickening display of patriarchy wrapped in Islamophobia, and lauded for "saving" the daughter from an imaginary interfaith relationship. However, the religion/caste and love angle doesn't even need to exist to hurt the 'honour' of patriarchy. In its annual publication on 'Crime in India', the NCRB recorded only 33 cases that the police and authorities classified as communal or caste-based honour killings in 2021. A Skewed Dynamic Meanwhile, a UN report on global homicide claims, "36 percent of homicide victims at the hands of a partner or a family member were male, while 64 percent were female between 2011 to 2017." There is clearly a gap between the communal undertones and the real number of women killed by family. In May of 2023, a man in Thane killed his 12-year-old sister on the mere suspicion that she could have been in a physical relationship with someone. His proof? The child's period blood. He first first tortured her physically with burns, then killed the child. There was no interfaith love angle. In March of 2023, a married woman in Noida was killed by her brothers to 'protect family honour'. Najma was in a bad marriage, and the brothers suspected she had an affair and was drinking alcohol. So they killed her and dumped her body in Hindon river. A quick Google search for 'daughter killed by father' or 'sister killed by brother' gives you a host of results. The majority fall under the traditionally understood paradigms of honour killing - inter-caste or interfaith love stories. But many involve seemingly innocuous 'offences', as mentioned in above cases. On the other hand, cases where mothers or sisters are killing sons and brothers because they are uncontrollable or have offended the family honour in any way barely exist. The mothers don't feel offended by taunts like 'your son is too independent'. Sisters cannot take it upon themselves to 'control' the family honour by harming a brother should they doubt him of having female friends. Honour, always, resides in female agency. Or rather, in the absence of it. Which is why we need to move beyond the presumption that honour killing is a way of preserving caste and religious bloodlines - it is, and has been, an excuse to erase female agency.
The Citizen
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Citizen
Kenyan president makes u-turn on police violence stance as protests escalate
President Ruto, once a vocal critic of police brutality, now supports violent suppression of protests, raising fears of a return to autocratic rule in Kenya. A young woman reacts as young activists, friends and family members surround the coffin of Boniface Kariuki, a street hawker who died from gunshot wounds days after being shot by Kenyan police during nationwide protests against police violence and government policies, during his funeral in a village near Kangema on July 11, 2025. Picture: Luis Tato / AFP When Kenyan President William Ruto took office in 2022, he pledged to end police brutality. Three years on, he has instructed officers to shoot violent protesters 'in the leg'. Over the past year, the east African country has been grappling with waves of demonstrations, initially over economic stagnation and corruption but later broadening out to police violence, a long-standing issue in the country of 55 million. The protests have been met with increasingly fierce repression, rights groups say, leaving dozens dead. Kenyan authorities have justified their heavy-handed response by pointing to violence and looting during the demonstrations, while rights groups allege that some of this unrest is the work of paid thugs acting alongside officers to stir mayhem. A more belligerent tone In 2023, a year after disbanding a notorious police squad, Ruto said: 'I made a promise during my campaign trail that I would stop extrajudicial killings.' 'No mother, no Kenyan will die under circumstances that the government of Kenya cannot explain,' he added. Such comments seem a long way away now, as the president has struck a more belligerent tone, condemning the rallies and systematically backing police officers. More than 100 people have died since anti-government demonstrations broke out in June of last year, according to rights groups, with 38 dying in the latest rally on July 7. Ruto has alleged those behind the protests are attempting 'to overthrow the government' and that any attack on a police officer or station is a 'declaration of war'. Two days after the July 7 demonstration, he said violent protesters should be 'shot in the leg'. ALSO READ: Kenya's president warns against bid to 'overthrow' govt by protests 'Losing it' Ruto's comments have been met with shock and anger by parts of the population. 'The president is losing it,' wrote Kenyan newspaper The Standard in an editorial, with another frontpage that read: 'Kenya sliding into tyranny'. 'Whether he's instructing police to shoot in the leg or wherever… let us just take it for what it is,' said Otsieno Namwaya, a researcher with Human Rights Watch. 'It is a shoot-to-kill order,' he added. Karuti Kanyinga, a political researcher at the University of Nairobi, said the government's heavy-handed response to protests reminded him of the 1990s, when Kenya suffered years of autocratic rule by then-president Daniel arap Moi. Ruto himself has said he is a 'student' of the former leader, cutting his political teeth in the youth league of Moi's party. 'We are on a cliff and the possibility of going to a very violent period, like the post-election violence period of 2007, is very high,' said Kanyinga. 'I think he's preparing to move into a tougher, repressive phase in his regime,' he said of Ruto. Cases of abductions — a prominent feature of the Moi era — have risen sharply since the protests began, according to several rights groups, which estimate more than 80 abductions have occurred over the past year, with dozens still missing. Ruto initially said there had been no abductions. He later promised to end disappearances and ensured that all abducted individuals had been 'returned to their families'. ALSO READ: Kenyan cop faces possible murder charge for rally bystander's death But some of these families are still searching for their loved ones. 'Cannot be held hostage' The rhetoric from those around the president has also intensified. 'We have told the police that anyone who comes near a police station: shoot them,' interior minister Kipchumba Murkomen told a crowd on June 26. He later claimed the remarks, caught on camera, had been taken out of context. The government's defence committee chairman was also filmed calling for 'shoot-to-kill' during rallies. Also backing Ruto is Christopher Aseka, a lawmaker who over the weekend rejected suggestions that the president had endorsed such orders. 'He is simply saying, if you are caught burning a police station or destroying public infrastructure, you will be immobilised,' Aseka told a crowd. Parts of Nairobi's outskirts saw looting and vandalism during the June and July protests, with the interior ministry saying hundreds of officers were injured. 'This country cannot be held hostage by a few rogue individuals,' Aseka added. ALSO READ: Eight killed as deadly clashes erupt in Kenya on protest anniversary 'Dictatorship 101' Pro-democracy protests last week to mark Saba Saba day — the anniversary of the bloody 1990 uprising that demanded a return to multi-party democracy after years of autocratic rule — were met by a heavy police presence and violence. Rights groups reported at least 38 deaths among protesters, while the government says only 17 people died. 'Saba Saba was the deadliest single day since the beginning of the demos' a year ago, said Africa Hussein Khalid, head of rights group Vocal. Protests also erupted in June over the death of teacher Albert Ojwang, who died in custody, with people marching in Nairobi against police brutality. The United Nations has condemned the use of force by Kenyan authorities. Contacted by AFP, a government spokesperson pointed to Ruto's full remarks last week to 'understand the context', without answering further questions. But for many rights defenders, Saba Saba marked a new low. 'Ruto defended the police without saying a single word for the victims,' Khalid, from Vocal, said. 'The force is used to silence dissent,' he said. 'It is dictatorship 101.' NOW READ: Motorbike-riding 'goons' attack Kenya protesters
Canada News.Net
4 days ago
- Politics
- Canada News.Net
Zelensky withdraws Ukraine from landmark anti-mine treaty
Kiev has been actively using the banned munitions in Donbass despite being a signatory of the convention Ukraine officially suspended its participation in the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention on Tuesday. The respective bill was passed by the country's parliament and signed into law by Vladimir Zelensky. The landmark agreement, also known as the Ottawa Treaty, bans the use, production, stockpiling, and transfer of anti-personnel landmines. Ukraine joined the treaty in 1999 and ratified it in 2005. In announcing the decision, Zelensky claimed that it was necessary to withdraw from the convention to reach "at least parity" with Russia. Russia, as well as the United States, China, and several other countries, had never been a signatory to the treaty. Kiev has never been fully compliant with the Ottawa Treaty, as it failed to destroy the vast stockpiles of anti-personnel mines that it inherited after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ukrainian forces have been actively using the banned munitions since the early stages of the conflict in Donbass, which erupted in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan coup. Ukrainian troops have often been seen deploying various anti-personnel mines, including Soviet-made MON-family directional mines, as well as the notorious scatterable PFM-1 'petal' mines. The latter munitions, which are deployed through multiple rocket launcher-fired projectiles, have been repeatedly shot into densely populated civilian areas. According to the Ottawa Treaty, a party to the agreement is allowed to withdraw from it "six months after the receipt of the instrument of withdrawal by the Depositary," i.e. the UN Secretary-General. If the country is engaged in an armed conflict when this period ends, the withdrawal will not take effect until hostilities cease. Ukraine's withdrawal from the treaty, first announced by Zelensky on June 29, has been criticized by human rights groups. The use of anti-personnel mines only inflicts more casualties "over the short and long term," Mary Wareham, deputy director of the Crisis, Conflict and Arms Division at Human Rights Watch, told the Kyiv Independent. "Given that Ukraine is in the midst of a war, this is a symbolic move aimed at giving Ukraine political cover to flagrantly violate long-standing prohibitions on developing, producing, and using anti-personnel mines," she stressed.
Perth Now
4 days ago
- Politics
- Perth Now
Tibetans raise rights abuses as PM meets Chinese leader
Tibet's president in exile has cautioned Australia about appeasing China for economic gain as he warns about Beijing's repression stretching into Australia. Penpa Tsering has urged Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to use his trip to China, which coincides with his own to Australia, to call out Chinese human rights abuses, including in Tibet. Mr Albanese met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Tuesday, where he said he discussed several issues but did not refer to human rights in his opening remarks or the subsequent press conference with Australian media. Mr Tsering said it was important human rights issues were raised as more than just a box-checking exercise at the start of meetings, as the Chinese government would brush off timid remarks knowing there would be no follow-through. He said most Tibetans in Australia were former political prisoners and needed to self-censor criticisms of China if they wanted to get a visa to go back to the autonomous region to visit family. "I would like to believe that Australia is concerned about human rights situations, religious freedoms in every part of the world because that's a value that Australians cherish as a democratic, free country," he told AAP. Human Rights Watch's Australia director Daniela Gavshon said vague statements by the prime minister minimised the seriousness of China's abuses. Mr Albanese said Australia would "disagree where we must" when asked about China's human rights record in Shanghai. "By glossing over human rights as a difference of opinion, the Australian government risks undermining the very system that was established to protect and promote people's rights all over the world," she told AAP. As Mr Albanese promotes greater trade between Australia and China during his trip, Mr Tsering encouraged Canberra to reverse course and give China less business. This would deprive it of the economic benefits it then uses to prop up the very military build-up and human rights abuses Canberra then criticises, he said. "People look for material benefit more than moral values, unfortunately," the president in exile said. "As long as you have business, economic development, everybody feels comfortable and they don't talk about human rights - everything goes under the carpet, that's very sad." Mr Tsering is using his week-long tour in Australia to meet with the Tibetan community rather than political meetings, but will return for a second trip in February on a more diplomatic mission. China tightly controls Tibet and has been widely accused of severe human rights violations including torture, arbitrary detention and forced labour. Mr Tsering said Tibet was autonomous in name only as Beijing cracks down on freedoms and suppresses local culture. A major point of contention is religious freedoms, with China demanding the authority to determine the next Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism's spiritual leader. The Dalai Lama has just turned 90 and followers believe His Holiness is reincarnated upon his death and China should have no say in the religious process.
