human rights

Even though Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer doubts that mass internment would happen again in the United States, ABC News' Alexander Mallin reports.

The Supreme Court has never overturned its decision approving of the Roosevelt Administration's detention of Japanese Americans in World War II. But, if mass detention of one group was attempted again in the U.S., Breyer said American courts would likely enforce the country's "'stronger traditions of civil liberties'" that have developed in the intervening 70 years.

Robert Edward Precht, opining in The Washington Post, said that China is posing a moral dilemma for the American Bar Association because of its recent crackdown on human rights lawyers. He criticizes the ABA for not impugning a recent crackdown on lawyers in China and for its vote against making a statement at the annual meeting in August against the crackdown. Opponents argued that Beijing might close the ABA office in China if the organization officially criticized the treatment of human rights lawyers. Precht says the ABA can change course and call "on the authorities to immediately release the wrongfully arrested activists and to make clear that they are not at risk of torture and other ill treatment. China’s beleaguered civil rights lawyers deserve no less."

Robert Edward Precht, opining in The Washington Post, said that China is posing a moral dilemma for the American Bar Association because of its recent crackdown on human rights lawyers. He criticizes the ABA for not impugning a recent crackdown on lawyers in China and for its vote against making a statement at the annual meeting in August against the crackdown. Opponents argued that Beijing might close the ABA office in China if the organization officially criticized the treatment of human rights lawyers. Precht says the ABA can change course and call "on the authorities to immediately release the wrongfully arrested activists and to make clear that they are not at risk of torture and other ill treatment. China’s beleaguered civil rights lawyers deserve no less."

The Canada Supreme Court has ruled that Ecuadoreans can sue Chevron and its Canadian subsidiary within that country to enforece a $9.5 billion judgment in Ecuador, The Globe and Mail's Sean Fine reports. Fine notes that the ruling weakens the corporate veil between a corporate parent and its subsidiary and "has major implications for Canadian multinational companies whose business activities raise environmental or human-rights concerns around the globe."

Does the right to free speech and free thought end where someone else's freedom of thought and freedom of speech start?

The issue is not an academic one with the killing of several Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and journalists in Paris and with a liberal Saudi Arabian blogger sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, 1,000 lashes, and a 1 million Saudi riyal fine (roughly $266,000) for insulting Islam, Foreign Policy's Michael Wahid Hanna reports. The Organization of the Islamic Conference has promoted the notion of defamation of religion as a cognizable legal concept, Hanna reports, but "international human rights law remains quite clear on the impermissibility of such discriminatory measures." However, laws against blasphemy, apostasy or defamation are not rare: "In 2011, the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life found that nearly half the countries in the world have laws or policies that penalize blasphemy, apostasy, or defamation," Hanna further reports.

He argues that blasphemy laws are problematic because they chill free thought and inquiry and because authoriarian counties use such laws to suppress minority rights and punish nonconfirmity.

Rebecca Liao, writing in Foreign Affairs, reports on how China has proposed several legal reforms to provide "a stronger, more independent, and more professionalized judiciary," including separation of the courts from party interference and ensuring judges are chosen from the legal profession. The reforms are needed because, even though many mechanisms have been created for citizens to seek redress with the government, corruption also has exploded, Liao says. However, the legal reforms are not being undertaken to expand democracy in China, but to provide an outlet for democratic desires in the country without undermining party control, Lia reports: "Unable to champion true judicial independence, the ruling party’s solution is to make sure that the courts are hyper-competent and have enough structural integrity to carry out the law. China’s legal reforms are really an expansion of the state to include an organ more responsive to the people but still sheltered from the destabilizing forces of democracy."

The landmark World Conference of Indigenous Peoples has been far from the limelight "during a frantic week in New York when world leaders gathered to discuss climate change and the security situation in Syria and Iraq," Radio Australia reports. Kalama Oka Aina Niheu, who is from Hawaii, told Radio Australia that the conference did not provide an avenue for indigenous peoples to voice their concerns about climate change and demilitarization because those issues were kept off that UN conference's agenda. The North American Indian Peoples caucus withdrew its support from the conference, she reports. As a result, she expressed a concern that the conference would be turned into an international version of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs and "people who are going to be supported and uplifted in this process are going to be people who support extractive industries and who support mechanisms that actually disempower indigenous peoples," she said in the interview.

The United National General Assembly "approved a document strengthening the rights of indigenous peoples worldwide. The Outcome Document was endorsed by consensus at the start of the first World Conference on Indigenous Peoples," the Associated Press reports. Seven years ago, the UN also adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

According to the AP, Aili Keskitalo, president of the Sami Parliament in Norway, said that the outcome document recognizes that indigenous peoples will be allowed to participate in UN actions that affect their communities.

Navi Pillay, the United Nations' High Commissioner for Human Rights, argues in a draft report that digital privacy is a human right, the Washington Post reports. Wide-ranging surveillance by the National Security Agency and the United Kingdom's General Communications Headquarters undermine that right, Pillay argues. Pillay's draft report argues "'the best remedy of all is to establish strong legal protections to ensure that such violations do not happen in the first place,'" the Post concludes.

The Onondaga Nation, one of the Haudenosaunee tribes in New York state, is taking its land claim to the Organization of American States, alleging that the loss of 2.5 million acres of their land violated their human rights, the Syracuse Post-Standard reports. The Nation's land claim was dismissed in American courts and now will be filed in the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.