Tuesday, October 23, 2018

2018-2019 Struggle for Human Rights

No struggle for human rights around the world is ever complete. The record that I began in the earlier post, "Hope for the Future," needs to be updated with some  positive and negative developments.

     Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was murdered by a military death squad in 1980 because he spoke out for unions and poor peasant groups against the grip of prosperous coffee growers and capitalism in El Salvador, was declared a saint of the Catholic Church in 2018.

     Vietnam released and exiled "Mother Mushroom," Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, who had been jailed for writing about the country's corruption and pollution.

     Boko Haram continues to kill and kidnap innocent victims in Nigeria and the Cameroon.

     North Korea has re-education camps for thousands, and China also holds Muslim Uighurs in camps because their religion is said to undermine peace and security. In March, 2019, Kazakhstan would demonstrate an effort to maintain good relations with its Chinese neighbor by arresting Serikzhan Bilash for supporting Uighurs detained in Xinjiang's camps.

     Russia tried unsuccessfully to poison a spy in the UK in 2018, and it continues to hold political prisoners, such as Oleg Sentsov and Oleg and Alexei Navalny. In February, 2019, Russia would arrest Michael Calvey, a U.S financier, which is reminiscent of the expulsion of Browder, whose tax expert, sometimes called his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, died in a Russian prison.

     For criticizing the regime of King Salman and his son, Muhammad bin Salman (MBS), the Saudi Arabian journalist and US resident, Jamal Khashoggi, was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Turkey in October, 2018, but in the same month, a Turkish court released a US pastor, Andrew Brunson, who had been in prison there on false terrorism charges for two years.

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