Latest news with #politicaldissent
Reuters
5 days ago
- Business
- Reuters
Hungarian minister calls for safeguards in contested transparency bill
BUDAPEST, June 5 (Reuters) - A Hungarian government minister said on Thursday that a new transparency bill targeting foreign-funded groups must not be used for political prosecution and should contain safeguards, highlighting differences within the ruling party over the plan. Prime Minister Viktor Orban, in power since 2010, pledged in March to crack down on foreign funding of independent media, opposition politicians and NGOs. The bill, submitted to parliament by Orban's nationalist Fidesz party on May 14, would draft a list of organisations that get foreign funding and restrict or even shut them down if deemed to threaten Hungary's sovereignty and its culture. Critics say the bill aims to stifle political dissent ahead of a national election due in 2026 when Orban faces an unprecedented challenge from a new opposition party. The bill has prompted street protests, while scores of editors from leading European news outlets signed a petition last month calling on Hungary to scrap the bill. On Wednesday Fidesz unexpectedly postponed a parliamentary debate on the legislation and said a vote would not take place before the summer recess. Regional Development Minister Tibor Navracsics said he backed the original purpose of the legislation to create transparency over the finances of groups influencing public discourse but voiced opposition to some provisions. "If we must be drawing up a list (of organisations), then that must be as specific as possible, or the possibility of judicial recourse must be provided," Navracsics, a former justice minister, told the Otpontban political podcast. Navracsics, a former European Commissioner, said he also opposed a proposal to strip targeted organisations of the right to receive voluntary income tax donations from the public. Navracsics dismissed speculation that Orban would not contest the upcoming election as prime minister but he said the lavish lifestyle of some ruling party politicians and businessmen around Fidesz was "harmful". "I do not know if this will be a decisive factor (in the election). However, from my own constituency I know there are indeed people irritated by such levels of wealth inequality," he said.
National Post
30-05-2025
- General
- National Post
U.S. lawyer stripped of his security clearance by Trump cautions Canada
An American lawyer stripped of his security clearance by U.S. President Donald Trump says Canadians need to be vigilant about attacks on political freedom south of the border. Article content Article content Mark Zaid, a speaker at the Web Summit Vancouver tech conference, said he never expected to get 'attacked' by a sitting president over the work he's done in his three decades practising law, representing clients from the worlds of intelligence and national security. Article content Article content He said Canadians need to be wary of the rise of artificial intelligence that could be used to either target political dissent or shield it, warning that it's hard to prevent attacks on democratic norms, rather than react to them. Article content Article content 'This is more about whether or not political dissent is going to be tolerated, and so I think AI and the tech community is the next sort of shield,' he said Thursday. Article content Zaid is co-founder of the non-profit Whistleblower Aid and he said Canada is not immune to the forces that have shaped American political culture under Trump. Article content 'We share so much with our television, the news broadcasts, everything. We're watching each other all the time and so I think what's going on in the United States could easily happen in Canada, which I hope never will,' he said. 'But that's why you watch what's going on elsewhere to make sure it doesn't happen here.' Article content Article content Zaid is suing Trump and others after the president stripped him of his security clearance at the same time as former president Joe Biden and other political figures. Article content Article content The lawyer had represented a whistleblower during the first Trump administration, and has practised law in the national security space since former president Bill Clinton was in power. He touts himself as non-partisan, and says he is registered as an independent. Article content Zaid — who said he didn't bring his cellphone across the border in case it got confiscated on his return — said artificial intelligence may be in its 'infancy' but it is at the 'forefront of everything that's going on.' Article content He said technology's impacts on politics knows no borders, with social media bot accounts from outside the country demonstrating how 'you don't any longer have to be local to be able to have an effect. In fact, you can be across the world.'
Al Jazeera
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
‘Farcical': Venezuelan opposition denounces arrest before weekend vote
A top figure in Venezuela's opposition has been arrested on charges of 'terrorism' before parliamentary elections scheduled for the weekend. On Friday, a social media account for Juan Pablo Guanipa, a close associate of Maria Corina Machado, considered the leader of the opposition coalition, announced he had been detained. State television also carried images of his arrest, as he was escorted away by armed guards. In a prewritten message online, Guanipa denounced Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro for human rights abuses, including stifling political dissent and false imprisonment. 'Brothers and sisters, if you are reading this, it is because I have been kidnapped by the forces of Nicolas Maduro's regime,' Guanipa wrote. 'For months, I, like many Venezuelans, have been in hiding for my safety. Unfortunately, my time in hiding has come to an end. As of today, I am part of the list of Venezuelans kidnapped by the dictatorship.' Since Venezuela held a hotly contested presidential election in July 2024, Guanipa, along with several other opposition figures, has been in hiding, for fear of being arrested. That presidential election culminated in a disputed outcome and widespread protests. On the night of the vote, Venezuela's election authorities declared Maduro the winner, awarding him a third successive six-year term, but it failed to publish the polling tallies to substantiate that result. Meanwhile, the opposition coalition published tallies from voting stations that it said proved its candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, had prevailed in a landslide. International watchdogs also criticised the election for its lack of transparency. Maduro's government responded to the election-related protests with a police crackdown that led to nearly 2,000 arrests and 25 people killed. It also issued arrest warrants against opposition leaders, accusing them of charges ranging from conspiracy to falsifying records. Maduro has long accused political dissidents of conspiring with foreign forces to topple his government. Gonzalez himself was among those for whom a warrant was signed. He fled to exile in Spain. Others have gone into hiding, avoiding the public eye. Until recently, a group of five opposition members had sought shelter in the Argentinian embassy in Caracas, until they were reportedly smuggled out of the country earlier this month. Opposition members and their supporters have dismissed the charges against them as spurious and further evidence of the Maduro government's repressive tactics. 'This is pure and simple STATE TERRORISM,' Machado, the opposition leader, wrote on social media in the wake of Guanipa's arrest. Machado and others have said that Guanipa was one of several people arrested in the lead-up to this weekend's regional elections, which will see members of the National Assembly and state-level positions on the ballot. Several prominent members of the opposition have pledged to boycott the vote, arguing it is a means for Maduro to consolidate power. 'Just hours before a farcical election with no guarantees of any kind, the regime has reactivated an operation of political repression,' Gonzalez wrote on social media, in reaction to the recent spate of arrests. He argued that the detention of Guanipa and others was a means of ensuring 'nothing will go off script' during Sunday's vote. 'They harass political, social, and community leaders. They persecute those who influence public opinion. They intend to shut down all alternative information spaces and ensure a narrative monopoly,' Gonzalez wrote. 'To the international community: This is not an election. It's an authoritarian device to shield the power they've usurped.'
The Guardian
17-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Trump effort to deport pro-Palestinian students suffers setbacks – but the legal question still looms
The Trump administration suffered yet another blow this past week to its efforts to deport international students over their pro-Palestinian speech, when a third federal judge threw a wrench into a government campaign widely criticized as a political witch hunt with little historical precedent. On Wednesday, a federal judge in Virginia ordered immigration authorities to release Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow Badar Khan Suri from custody. The Indian scholar's release followed that of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University student from Turkey, and Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian permanent resident and Columbia University student. The administration is seeking to deport all of them on the grounds that their presence in the US is harmful to the country's foreign policy, part of a crackdown on political dissent that has sent shockwaves through US campuses. Only the first foreign student to be detained by the administration over his activism, Mahmoud Khalil, a US permanent resident of Palestinian descent, remains in detention more than two months after being taken from his Columbia University residential building. Yunseo Chung, another Columbia student and green card holder, went into hiding and sued the administration in March before authorities could detain her; others have left the country rather than risk detention. A federal judge in New Jersey is expected to rule soon on a request to release Khalil pending further resolution of his case – but his attorneys are hopeful the other releases are a good sign. The green card holder, who is married to a US citizen, was known on Columbia's campus as a steady mediator between the university administration and student protesters. He was recently denied a request to attend the birth of his son. 'These decisions reflect a simple truth – the constitution forbids the government from locking up anyone, including noncitizens, just because it doesn't like what they have to say,' said Brian Hauss, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups representing Khalil and the others. 'We will not rest until Mahmoud Khalil is free, along with everyone else in detention for their political beliefs.' Diala Shamas, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is also involved in Khalil's defense, said that 'we're seeing wins in all of these cases', but added that 'every single day that Mahmoud Khalil spends in detention is a day too long and adds to the chilling effect that his continued detention has on other people'. The arrests have prompted widespread anxiety among international students and scholars and significantly contributed to a climate of fear and repression on US campuses. Despite occasional efforts to revive it, last year's mass campus protest movement has been significantly dampened, even as Israel's war in Gaza – the focus of the protests – is only escalating. But while the Trump administration seems to be getting clobbered in court, the fundamental question at the heart of the cases – whether the government has the authority to detain and deport noncitizens over their political speech – is far from settled. Khan Suri, Öztürk and Mahdawi have all been released pending a resolution to federal court cases over the government's authority to detain them. Separately, the government's effort to deport them is moving through the immigration court system, a different process. Advocates warn of a long legal battle that is likely to end up before the US supreme court. But they are hopeful. The releases, which required clearing substantial legal thresholds, are a welcome sign, they say, that the courts are skeptical of the government's broader case: that it has the authority to use an obscure immigration provision to deport anyone the secretary of state deems a foreign policy problem. The government hasn't clearly defended its position. In an appeal hearing this month in Öztürk and Mahdawi's cases, one of the judges on the panel asked the government's lawyers whether the administration believed the students' speech to be protected by the first amendment's guarantees of free speech and expression 'We have not taken a position on that,' one of the attorneys, Drew Ensign, responded. 'I don't have the authority to take a position on that.' Instead, the legal proceedings thus far have largely focused on jurisdictional and other technical arguments. In Khalil's case, for example, a New Jersey judge recently issued a 108-page decision dealing exclusively with his authority to hear the case. The judge hasn't yet signaled his position on the constitutional questions. US district court judge Geoffrey Crawford, who ordered Mahdawi's release, compared the current political moment with the red scare and Palmer raids of the early 20th century, when US officials detained and deported hundreds of foreign nationals suspected of holding leftist views, as well as the McCarthyism of the 1950s. 'The wheel of history has come around again,' Crawford wrote, 'but as before these times of excess will pass.' In her ruling in Khan Suri's case this week, US district judge Patricia Giles said that his release was 'in the public interest to disrupt the chilling effect on protected speech', and that she believed the broader challenge against the government had a substantial likelihood of success. Chip Gibbons, the policy director at Defending Rights & Dissent, a civil rights group, noted that while challenging immigration detention is often an 'uphill battle' given the deference typically shown by judges to the government, the rulings might suggest otherwise. 'Three separate federal judges, in three separate cases, have found that victims of the Trump-Rubio campaign of politically motivated immigration enforcement raise substantial constitutional claims challenging their detention,' he added. 'Even a federal judiciary all too often deferential to executive claims of national security or foreign policy powers has clearly seen that the administration's actions are likely retaliatory against political speech.' But even if the government ultimately loses its bid to deport students whose views it does not like, the free speech climate in the US has changed. The administration continues to pursue coercive investigations into universities under the guise of fighting antisemitism, dangling billions of dollars in funding as a threat, and universities have been surprisingly compliant in order to prevent a revival of last year's protests. But some voices remain defiant. 'We will not fear anyone because our fight is a fight for love, is a fight for democracy, is a fight for humanity,' Mahdawi said at a press conference upon his release. 'This system of democracy [has] checks and balances, and discord is part of it.'
Mail & Guardian
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Mail & Guardian
EFF accuses UK of ‘orchestrated' visa delay to block Malema's visit
EFF leader Julius Malema The In a statement released on Wednesday, the party condemned the failure to process Malema's visa application in time for his scheduled address on 10 May at the conference hosted by the African Society of Cambridge University under the theme, The Making of Africa's Future Presidents. The EFF claimed the British high commission delaying processing his visa was 'nothing more than an expression of bureaucratic process being used to suppress political dissent. The British high commission has actively delayed the processing and approval of the visa application by the CIC [commander-in-chief].' In a letter, dated 7 May and addressed to EFF secretary general Godrich Gardee, British high commissioner Antony Phillipson said 'colleagues at the UK home office have said that they will regrettably be unable to process the application in time owing to the necessary steps required to consider visa applications and the unfortunate timing of some recent UK bank holidays'. Phillipson said the situation was 'deeply disappointing', particularly as the EFF delegation had applied well in advance and had paid for priority service. 'I would like to assure you that I have taken a personal interest in this issue and have been in regular communication with relevant home office officials about this case … I have no means of intervening in the decision-making process itself, which is solely a matter for the home office,' Phillipson wrote. The EFF said it regarded the situation as a political snub, suggesting the delay was a result of Malema's outspoken views on colonialism, the British monarchy and the role of Western powers in global conflicts. 'The United Kingdom is not only suppressing academic freedom by essentially banning the president of the EFF from travelling to the country, but is engaged in an open declaration of war against those who dare to stand up to warmongers such as the British monarchy,' the statement read. Malema has previously criticised Britain for its historical and ongoing political role in Africa, and its support of Israel. The EFF reiterated its stance on Britain's refusal to pay reparations for colonial crimes, citing its involvement in the slave trade, the suppression of Kenya's Mau Mau rebellion and the Iraq War under former prime minister Tony Blair. The party also used the opportunity to stress its controversial remarks after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, calling her a symbol of colonial brutality. Malema had planned to visit Queen Elizabeth's grave 'to confirm that the woman who was at the centre of the pain inflicted on Africa and her people had indeed departed from this world', the EFF said. The party has framed the incident as part of a broader attempt to silence critical voices opposed to imperialism and capitalism. It accused the UK of resisting Pan-African voices that challenge the global order, particularly those calling for economic emancipation and historical redress. 'We will continue to build relations with all those who appreciate the message of the EFF,' the statement concluded, adding that the party would not be discouraged in its international mobilisation efforts.
