Message to illegal immigrants from Hungary

While images of Hungarian riot police officers firing tear gas and water cannons at migrants along the Serbian border on Wednesday appalled human rights activists, the mayor of one small town in the south of Hungary remains concerned that his nation might still seem too welcoming to those fleeing war or poverty.

To remedy this, Laszlo Toroczkai, an ultranationalist with a flair for the dramatic, released a personal “Message to illegal immigrants from Hungary” on Facebook and YouTube late Wednesday, threatening them with arrest and displaying his town’s security hardware in a video edited in the style of a big-budget action movie.

nytimes.com

At Work Inside Australian Detention Centres: A Guard’s Story

This is a first-hand account of life inside an Australian immigration detention facility, told from the perspective of a former employee of Serco, the ubiquitous multinational service provider that runs the nation’s onshore centres. Realised in a comic-book style and drawn from exclusive interviews and diary entries from the ex-employee, A Guard’s Story offers rare insight into how Australia’s outsourced detention facilities are run.

Like all Serco employees, our informant signed a confidentiality agreement and has taken a significant personal risk by talking to us. Prior to being employed by Serco, our source was sympathetic to the plight of asylum seekers in Australia’s detention facilities and took on a job as a “client support worker” to try to help people from inside the system.

What follows is our source’s experience, illustrated. Read the whole A Guard’s Story at The Global Mail

Iraq illegally detains, tortures and rapes thousands of women

Iraqi authorities are detaining thousands of women illegally and subjecting many to torture and ill-treatment, including the threat of sexual abuse, Human Rights Watch said in a report published on Thursday.

Many women were detained for months or even years without charge before seeing a judge, HRW said, and security forces often questioned them about their male relatives' activities rather than crimes in which they themselves were implicated.

In custody, women described being kicked, slapped, hung upside-down and beaten on the soles of their feet, given electric shocks, threatened with sexual assault by security forces during interrogation, and even raped in front of their relatives and children.

"The abuses of women we documented are in many ways at the heart of the current crisis in Iraq," said HRW's deputy Middle East and North Africa director Joe Stork in a statement accompanying the report, titled: "'No One Is Safe': Abuses of Women in Iraq's Criminal Justice System."

"These abuses have caused a deep-seated anger and lack of trust between Iraq's diverse communities and security forces, and all Iraqis are paying the price."

More on Reuters - HRW

How Corporations Are Cashing In On The Worldwide Immigration Crackdown

Nearly a decade ago, Australian authorities discovered major problems inside detention centers run by a private, for-profit company entrusted with immigrants locked up for entering the country illegally.

The company, Global Solutions Ltd. -- now owned by the British corporation G4S, the world's largest security firm -- was failing to administer care to detainees with serious health problems, according to a government investigation. A separate inquiry found that guards transporting detainees on a seven-hour drive had denied them food, water and access to bathrooms, ignoring pleas for help.

Amid public outcry over the investigation and protests by detainees who set fires and rioted at a detention center, the Australian government gradually phased out its contracts with the company. But as it now intensifies a crackdown on undocumented immigrants entering its waters, yielding growing numbers of detainees, the government has again turned to G4S to manage the flow.

More on The World Post

Guards shoot at Gitmo inmates forcing them to solitary cells

Inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison have clashed with guards during an attempt to end a two-month long hunger strike there. Officers tried to forcibly remove detainees from communal living quarters and isolate them in individual cells. Non-lethal rounds were fired at the prisoners as they resisted with improvised weapons. More on RT

Brazil acquits suspect in activist murders

Jose Rodrigues Moreira, a Brazilian man accused of conspiring to kill two environmental activists, has been acquitted, as two other men were found guilty. The jury set Moreira free on Thursday due to insufficient evidence, disappointing family members of the murdered married couple who claim he was the alleged mastermind of the attack and has enjoyed impunity.

Jose Claudio da Silva and his wife, Maria do Espirito Santo, had for years campaigned against loggers and ranchers who force slave labour to clear-cut large swaths of the Amazon. They had reported illegal loggers to police and federal prosecutors, and were killed in a May 2011 ambush near the Amazonian town of Maraba.

Two men, Lindonjonson Silva Rocha and Alberto Lopes do Nascimento, were found guilty of killing the couple and sentenced to more than 40 years in prison each. "This is a clear defeat for the families of the victims," said Al Jazeera's Gabriel Elizondo, reporting from the court. "This was the person they really wanted to see go to jail.

"There are about 100 people outside the court; family members, friends, acquaintances. They're all chanting 'justice' and 'crime'." Prosecutors vowed to appeal the acquittal of Moreira.

Video and more on Al Jazeera English

President Obama has utterly failed the first test of his second term

President Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 on Wednesday, despite his own threat to veto it over prohibitions on closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

Civil liberties advocates had roundly criticized the bill over Guantanamo and a separate section that could allow the military to indefinitely detain American citizens on suspicions of supporting terrorism. Just as he did with last year's version of the bill, however, Obama decided that the need to pass the NDAA, which also sets the armed forces' $633 billion budget for the 2013 fiscal year, was simply "too great to ignore," according to a presidential signing statement released in the early morning hours Thursday.

Members of the human rights coalition that had urged Obama to follow through on his veto threat blasted his decision as a cave to congressional Republicans. "President Obama has utterly failed the first test of his second term, even before inauguration day,” American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero said in a statement. “His signature means indefinite detention without charge or trial, as well as the illegal military commissions, will be extended.”

Huffington Post

Also see: A Death at Guantanamo on The Atlantic

Bethlehem Christians feel the squeeze as Israeli settlements spread

In the birthplace of Jesus, the impact of Israeli settlements and their growth has been devastating. In a Christmas message, the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said Bethlehem was enduring a "choking reality".

He added: "For the first time in 2,000 years of Christianity in our homeland, the Holy Cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem have been completely separated by Israeli settlements, racist walls and checkpoints." Bethlehem is now surrounded by 22 settlements, including Nokdim, where the hardline former Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman lives, and Neve Daniel, home to public diplomacy minister Yuli Edelstein.

The city is further hemmed in by the vast concrete and steel separation barrier, bypasses connecting settlements with Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and Israeli military zones. With little room to expand, it is now more densely populated than Gaza, according to one Palestinian official.

More on The Observer

Clinton and Hague attack Israel decision to build new settlements

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and British foreign secretary, William Hague, have launched attacks on an Israeli decision to build fresh settlements on occupied territory in the West Bank.

The Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu's decision to approve the construction of 3,000 new homes is widely seen as a response to the United Nations vote earlier this week that recognised a Palestinian bid to be a "non-member observer state".

The US, with Israel, strongly opposed that move, while Britain abstained in the vote. But now both countries have criticised the Israeli settlement decision, saying it hurts the chances of a two-state solution and the search for peace in the troubled region.

The Observer

illegal House Demolition for Olympics in Russia

The Russian authorities’ illegal bulldozing on a property in Sochi is a stain on the 2014 Winter Olympic Games preparations, Human Rights Watch said today.  The International Olympic Committee (IOC) should urgently intervene with the Russian government to respect the rights of the family, including by providing reasonable compensation, such as relocation to a home in a different neighborhood, Human Rights Watch said.

Sergei Khlistov has been living in a modest two-story house in the Adler section of Sochi for 16 years. His wife, daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren, ages 3 and 8, also live in the home. On September 14, 2012, at 11 a.m., without warning, local authorities brought in a demolition excavator and knocked down the storage shed next to the Khlistovs’ home. The authorities threatened to destroy the house and forcibly evict the family early next week.
“The Russian authorities are proceeding with this demolition and eviction in an utterly reckless manner that completely flies in the face of the Olympic principles of human dignity and respect,” said Jane Buchanan, senior researcher for Europe and Central Asia at Human Rights Watch. “The IOC needs to get the federal and Sochi authorities to stop this immediately or this family will be made homeless in the name of the Olympics.”

Human Rights Watch

French Riot police smash camps and hundreds rounded up for deportation as Socialists take on gipsies

French police were yesterday breaking up gipsy camps and deporting illegal immigrants found in them. Dozens of officers in riot gear descended on a settlement near Lille shortly after dawn to oversee the evacuation of some 200 Roma living in mobile homes.

One hundred people were evicted from a site in Lyon, with similar round-ups happening in other major cities including Marseille. Caravans and huts were destroyed in the Belleville area of central Paris on Wednesday, making another 100 people homeless. The policy being pursued by France’s socialist government was formulated by former conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy, who was frequently accused of pandering to the far right.

Mail Online

Israel doesn’t care about Human Rights

Israel cut working relations with the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday and will bar a U.N. team from entering Israel or the West Bank for a planned investigation of Jewish settlements, the Foreign Ministry said.

Israel accuses the council of having a pronounced anti-Israel bias because of what it says is its disproportionate focus on Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.

Israeli leaders have been in an uproar over the council's adoption of a resolution last week condemning Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem and its decision to send a fact-finding mission to investigate such activity.

The Associated Press

Illegal immigrants in Alabama get no Water

Illegal immigrants in Alabama, USA, have been threatened with losing their water supply under the strict new law the Obama administration today tried to block.

Under Section 30 of the regulation, those who lack official proof of residence are barred from entering into a ‘business transaction’ with the ‘state or a political subdivision of the state’. While it is not clear exactly what state services these are, illegal immigrants have in some cases been told they will no longer be entitled when the law comes into force.

Sign of the times: A poster displayed in the Alabama Water Works Law office in the town of Allgood. It could also discriminate against non-Alabaman Americans.
Daily Mail

Arizona: AZ GOP utility commission candidate wants to cut off all utility services to homes with undocumented immigrants.

No One Is Illegal

“We reject any idea there can be "fair" or "just" or "reasonable" or "non racist" controls, and the distinction between "economic migrants" and "refugees", and between the "legal" and the "illegal". We support free movement and equal rights for all, and unity between all.”

THE LOVE POLICE - No One Is Illegal