Free Republic

Boston resident Aijalon M. Gomes, 38, captured international headlines in 2010 when he was imprisoned in North Korea for seven months; he died on Nov. 17 in San DiegoA man held captive in a North Korean prison in 2010 and freed with the help of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter died in San Diego over the weekend after being found ablaze in a field. Aijalon M. Gomes, 38, had recently relocated to San Diego from Boston. On Friday night, around 11:30 p.m., an off-duty California Highway Patrol officer was driving westbound on Pacific Highway near SeaWorld Drive when he spotted...

In the 1990s, I and my distinguished colleague Charlotte Ponticelli had the privilege of working with Dr. Clyde Snow, one of the world’s foremost experts in forensic anthropology, who played an instrumental role in bringing justice to Argentina by uncovering the mass graves left behind by the country’s “Dirty War.” His actions and investigation helped uncover the truth about what was an incredibly deadly series of crimes carried out over nearly a decade. Holding the regime in Argentina accountable set a valuable precedent and demonstrated the global community’s commitment to upholding justice and human rights, which must be maintained today....

CAIRO (Reuters) - Six Egyptian men arrested for “promoting sexual deviancy” and “debauchery” on social media will be subjected to anal examinations ahead of their Oct. 1 trial, Amnesty International said on Saturday. Their arrest is part of a wider crackdown against homosexuality that started last week when a group of people were seen raising a rainbow flag at a concert, a rare public show of support for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in the conservative Muslim country. At least 11 people have since been arrested, Amnesty said, and one man has been sentenced to six years in jail...

An environmental group is filing the first lawsuit of its kind on Sept. 26 in the U.S., attempting to force the state of Colorado to recognize the “legal rights” of the Colorado River and the surrounding ecosystem. Activist organization Deep Green Resistance (DGR) has signed on as the river’s “next friends” in Colorado River v. State of Colorado. The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) is a legal adviser in the case, according to a CELDF press release.

States speaking in the UN Human Rights Sessions criticized Turkey harshly and urged the country to end rights violations at once. United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council’s 36th Human Rights Sessions continued on the second day with discussions on the annual human rights report presented by the High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein yesterday. State and international NGO representatives spoke in the sessions and pointed out the scope of human rights violations in various parts of the world and stressed the need to prevent violations through international solidarity. Throughout the day, several states and NGOs speaking to...

The case was over the abduction of Dong-Shik, a South Korean who was a permanent resident of the US and had spent seven years providing aid and proselytizing to North Korean defectors. An Israeli NGO announced on Monday that a US federal court in Washington, DC has granted it a historic $330 million default award judgment against North Korea in a civil damages trial for wrongful death, torture and kidnapping. The judgment, only announced Monday, but written on April 9, included $15 million dollars each to the son and brother of Reverend Dong Shik Kim, presumed dead, as well as...

The Fusion GPS news-for-hire scandal has not only led to the public identification of the source of the “Trump Dossier”—a for-profit company that provides opposition research to whoever could write big checks, which is staffed by four former Wall Street Journal reporters led by Glenn Simpson. The scandal has also lifted the lid off a sewer of corporate information warfare and opposition research that the flailing institutions of the mainstream press now regularly re-package as news, without ever saying where it came from—or who paid for it. While the idea that the products of paid opposition research are being main-lined...

Trudeau is sending out the message that imams preaching death to Jews and gays and treating women as second class citizens is okay in his Canada. And it seems it is The Canadian Press has obtained a copy of a draft citizenship guide the Liberals are working on. These guides are used by people studying to pass their citizenship test. The last time the guide was updated was in 2011 under the Harper government. While some of the changes to the guide were expected based upon Trudeau’s criticism of the Tories’ guide, others were totally unexpected. When former Immigration Minister...

Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, who was China's most prominent human rights and democracy advocate, has died aged 61. The activist had been serving an 11-year prison term for "subversion" and was recently moved to a hospital for treatment for terminal liver cancer. A university professor turned tireless rights campaigner, Mr Liu was branded a criminal by authorities. The Nobel Committee said the Chinese government bore a "heavy responsibility for his premature death". The campaigner was repeatedly jailed throughout his life. When not in prison, he was subject to severe restrictions while his wife, Liu Xia, was placed under house arrest.

Turkey's Human Rights Association deputy secretary general in charge of organisation stressed that the Turkish government detained human rights activists to hide the violations in the country. Turkish government detained human rights activists to hide the violations in Turkey, Human Rights Association’s (IHD) deputy secretary general in charge of organisation Necla Şengül said. Her remarks came after Turkish police arrested human rights activists in Istanbul, on July 5th. Idil Eser, Amnesty International’s director in Turkey in among the 11 activists arrested. “The arrested activists are leading experts in human rights. They were deliberately targeted by the government” Şengül said. Şengül...

Dallas proclaimed itself the first “human rights county” in Texas. The commissioners court embraced the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an initiative that claims to cultivate communities worldwide, although the Geneva-based Human Rights Council (HRC) has come under fire for anti-Israel bias and member countries with poor records. “Human rights abuses occur in our community, our country, and our world every day,” said Democrat Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, who pushed the resolution to a vote on July 5. “We must lead at the local level. We can’t do everything but we can all do something.” Democrat commissioners...

Press StatementHeather NauertDepartment Spokesperson Washington, DC July 6, 2017 The United States is deeply concerned by the July 5, detention of prominent human rights defenders from Amnesty International Turkey and other respected institutions. As with past arrests of prominent human rights defenders, journalists, academics, and activists, we underscore the importance of respecting due process and individual rights, as enshrined in the Turkish Constitution, and consistent with Turkey’s own international commitments. As we have expressed on numerous occasions, persistent curbs on freedom of expression erode the foundations of democratic society. More voices, not fewer, are necessary in challenging times.

UN Human Rights High Commissioner Al Hussein said: “Our attempts at investigating the severe human rights violations in South Eastern Turkey are constantly rejected.” 35th Human Rights session of the United Nations Human Rights Council started in Geneva. UN Human Rights High Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein’s speech at the opening started with the Israel-Palestine issue and demanded an end to the pain both sides have endured. Al Hussein also stated that extrajudicial executions are widespread in many countries throughout the world still and people suffer inhumane treatment. “OUR EFFORTS ON TURKEY'S SOUTH EAST ARE HINDERED” Al Hussein said the...

The Trump administration may decide to follow the example of George W. Bush and wash its hands of the UN’s Human Rights Council. Reuters reports this morning that the US may announce as soon as tomorrow that it will withdraw from the panel unless the UN commits to serious reform, especially in its obsession with Israel at the expense of real human-rights abuses: The United States is expected to signal on Tuesday that it might withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council unless reforms are ushered in including the removal of what it sees as an “anti-Israel bias”,...

SHANGHAI (AP) — A man investigating working conditions at a Chinese company that produces Ivanka Trump-brand shoes has been arrested and two others are missing, the arrested man's wife and an advocacy group said Tuesday. Hua Haifeng was accused of illegal surveillance, according to his wife, Deng Guilian, who said the police called her Tuesday afternoon. Deng said the caller told her she didn't need to know the details, only that she would not be able to see, speak with or receive money from her husband, the family's breadwinner....

Stuck in a Bangkok jail with a deportation order against her, Chen Guiqiu waited with dread over what seemed certain to come next. A Thai immigration official showed her surveillance video of the jail entrance, where more than a dozen Chinese security agents were waiting. Within minutes, Chen feared, she and her two daughters would be escorted back to China, where her husband, prominent rights lawyer Xie Yang, was held on a charge of inciting subversion - and where punishment for attempting to flee surely awaited her. After weeks on the run, Chen was exhausted, and so was her luck....

WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley is asking whether a suspected former Russian intelligence officer-turned U.S. lobbyist and the firm behind the unsubstantiated anti-Trump dossier should have registered as foreign agents for their efforts to bring down a U.S. law on behalf of the Kremlin. According to a complaint filed with the Justice Department, Fusion GPS, which was also involved in the creation of the unsubstantiated dossier alleging collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, was involved in the pro-Russia campaign to kill the Global Magnitsky Act around the same time. In 2012, President Obama signed into...

NEW YORK (AP) — The latest on sexual harassment allegations at Fox News (all times local): An attorney for a former Fox News contributor is calling for an independent investigation of sexual harassment allegations against host Bill O’Reilly. Lisa Bloom represents Wendy Walsh, a former Fox News contributor who says she lost a segment on “The O’Reilly Factor” after she refused to go to O’Reilly’s bedroom following a 2013 dinner in Los Angeles.

China's foreign ministry has denied reports that Chinese food companies are canning human flesh and selling it in Africa as corned beef. The country's state-run Xinhua news agency said one tabloid newspaper in Zambia was falsely quoting an unnamed woman living in China. She said Chinese firms were collecting dead human bodies, marinating them and packing them in tins. Chinese spokesman Hong Lei said the reports were "irresponsible".

Once the Middle EastÂ’s flourishing democracy, Turkey under Erdogan is lost in a sea of tyranny and political mayhem For all free and democratic societies, freedom of expression and the press are deemed sacred rights and it is considered sacrilege that any governmental authority attempts to control or censor these freedoms. Many in the US and Europe are under the impression that countries such as Cuba or North Korea may have the worst records of human rights violations along with the prosecution of journalists on flimsy accusations. The truth is that one of the worst records of human rights violations...