human rights – Faith Matters

UN: Taliban has plunged Afghanistan into ‘dire’ conditions

Faith Matters — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 16:50:31 +0000

The UN General Assembly has adopted a resolution accusing the Taliban of violating the human rights of Afghan women and girls, failing to establish a representative government and plunging the country into “dire economic, humanitarian and social conditions”.

The resolution also pointed to persistent violence in the country since the Taliban takeover 15 months ago and the presence of terrorist groups such as al-Qaida and the so-called Islamic State and their affiliates as well as the presence of “foreign terrorist fighters”.

Germany’s UN ambassador, Antje Leendertse, had hoped the 193-member General Assembly would approve the German-facilitated resolution by consensus.

But a vote was requested and it was adopted 116-0, with 10 countries abstaining — Russia, China, Belarus, Burundi, North Korea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Nicaragua, Pakistan and Zimbabwe. Some 67 countries did not vote.

General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, unlike Security Council resolutions, but they do reflect world opinion.

The adoption came the same day the Taliban, which already banned girls from secondary school, stopped women from using gyms and parks.

Before the vote, Ms Leendertse told the assembly that since the Taliban came to power in August 2021 Afghanistan has seen “a massive economic contraction and humanitarian crisis” which has left half the population facing “critical levels of food insecurity”.

“We expect a harsh winter and levels of needs that we have not seen in the last decades with little prospect for economic recovery and reduction of poverty,” she said.

Introducing the resolution, Ms Leendertse told the assembly the Taliban control the country but are not living up to their responsibility toward meeting the needs of the Afghan people.

“The resolution is a clear call to respect, protect and fulfil human rights, develop inclusive governance and fight terrorism,” she said.

“It contains a clear message that without that, there cannot be business as usual and no pathway toward recognition.”

The resolution pledges continued UN support for the Afghan people “in order to rebuild a stable, secure and economically self-sufficient state, free of terrorism, narcotics, transnational organised crime, including trafficking in persons, and corruption, and to strengthen the foundations of a constitutional democracy as a responsible member of the international community”.

It calls for improved access for aid workers and recognises the need to help address Afghanistan’s economic challenges, including efforts to restore the banking and financial systems and enabling Central Bank assets – held mainly in the US – to be used to help the Afghan people.

The resolution expresses deep concern at human rights abuses against women and girls, including sexual violence, and calls on the Taliban to promote “full, equal, meaningful and safe participation of women in all aspects of Afghan society”.

It condemns all attacks, reprisals and violence against journalists and media workers and calls for their perpetrators to be brought to justice.

The resolution reaffirms the assembly’s expectation that the Taliban will live up to its commitments to allow the safe departure of all Afghans and foreign nationals that want to leave the country.

Raab calls for UN to respond to ‘appalling’ human rights violations in China

Faith Matters — Mon, 22 Feb 2021 14:50:56 +0000

The Foreign Secretary has placed diplomatic pressure on the United Nations to respond to China’s “appalling treatment” of the Uighur Muslims and people in Hong Kong.

Addressing the UN Human Rights Council on Monday, Dominic Raab said “no-one can ignore the evidence any more” of a deteriorating human rights situation in China and called for international action.

It comes amid heightened tensions between Britain and China after Beijing banned BBC World News in retaliation after broadcast regulator Ofcom stripped state TV channel China Global Television Network of its UK broadcasting licence.

The UK last year also banned technology giant Huawei from being used in the country’s 5G communications network out of fears it could be used by the Chinese government to spy on Britain.

In his online speech, Mr Raab said people’s rights in Hong Kong are being “systematically violated” and that the national security law is a “clear breach of the Sino-British Joint Declaration” that is having a “chilling effect on personal freedoms”.

“Free and fair legislative elections must take place, with a range of opposition voices allowed to take part,” he urged.

The Cabinet minister criticised the continued restricted access to Tibet before turning his attention to the “systematic” human rights violations in Xinjiang.

He told council members the treatment of Uighur Muslims and other minorities in the region was “beyond the pale”.

The tone of Mr Raab’s speech was in stark contrast to remarks allegedly made by the Prime Minister earlier this month.

Boris Johnson, according to The Guardian, is said to have told a Downing Street roundtable with Chinese businesses that he was “fervently Sinophile” and determined to improve ties “whatever the occasional political difficulties”.

But Number 10 looked to stamp out talk of a rift between the Conservative Party leader and the Foreign Secretary on Chinese relations, with the Prime Minister’s official spokesman telling reporters Mr Johnson had been “outspoken in his condemnation” of human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.

During his UN speech, the Foreign Secretary said: “We see almost daily reports now that shine a new light on China’s systematic human rights violations perpetrated against Uighur Muslims and other minorities in Xinjiang.

“The situation in Xinjiang is beyond the pale.

“The reported abuses – which include torture, forced labour and forced sterilisation of women – are extreme and they are extensive. They are taking place on an industrial scale.”

Mr Raab used his eight-minute address to call for a UN motion to be passed to allow investigators into Xinjiang.

He said the Government had already taken action domestically by putting in place measures that ensure no company profiting from forced labour in Xinjiang can do business in the UK.

“It must be our collective duty to ensure this does not go unanswered – UN mechanisms must respond,” he continued.

“The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, or another independent fact-finding expert, must – and I repeat, must – be given urgent and unfettered access to Xinjiang.

“If members of this Human Rights Council are to live up to our responsibilities, there must be a resolution which secures this access.”

China has defended the presence of “re-education” camps in Xinjiang, saying they aim only to promote economic and social development in the region and to stamp out radicalism.

Mr Raab also voiced concerns about the military coup in Myanmar and the treatment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Russia.

Figures show dramatic reduction in Saudi Arabia’s use of death penalty

Faith Matters — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 13:47:58 +0000

Saudi Arabia, for years one of the world’s most prolific executioners, dramatically reduced the number of people put to death last year, following changes halting executions for non-violent drug-related crimes, according to the government’s tally and independent observers.

The Saudi government’s Human Rights Commission said on Monday it documented 27 executions in 2020.

That is compared to an all-time high of 184 executions the year before as documented by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

The change represents an 85% reduction in the number of people put to death last year, compared to 2019.

“The sharp decrease was brought about in part by a moratorium on death penalties for drug-related offences,” the Saudi rights commission said.

The commission said the new law ordering a stop to such executions came into effect sometime last year.

The new directive for judges does not appear to have been published publicly and it was not immediately clear whether the law was changed by royal decree, as is typically the case.

The AP previously reported that Saudi Arabia last year also ordered an end to the death penalty for crimes committed by minors and ordered judges to end the controversial practice of public flogging, replacing it with jail time, fines or community service.

The force behind these changes is 34-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has the backing of his father, King Salman.

In an effort to modernise the country, attract foreign investment and revamp the economy, the prince has spearheaded a range of reforms curtailing the power of ultraconservative Wahhabis, who adhere to a strict interpretation of Islam that many Saudis still practise.

For years, the kingdom’s high rate of executions was in large part due to the number of people executed for non-lethal offences, which judges had wide discretion to rule on, particularly for drug-related crimes.

Amnesty International ranked Saudi Arabia third in the world for the highest number of executions in 2019, after China where the number of executions is believed to be in the thousands, and Iran.

Among those put to death that year by Saudi Arabia were 32 minority Shiites convicted on terrorism charges related to their participation in anti-government protests and clashes with police.

While some crimes, such as premeditated murder, can carry fixed punishments under the Saudi interpretation of Islamic law, or Shariah, drug-related offences are considered “ta’zir,” meaning neither the crime nor the punishment is defined in Islam.

Discretionary judgments for “ta’zir” crimes led to arbitrary rulings with contentious outcomes.

The kingdom has long been criticised by independent rights groups for applying the death sentence for non-violent crimes related to drug trafficking.

Many of those executed for such crimes were often poor Yemenis or low-level drug smugglers of South Asia descent, with the latter having little to no knowledge of Arabic and unable to understand or read the charges against them in court.

Saudi Arabia carries out executions mainly by beheading and sometimes in public.

The kingdom had argued that public executions and those of drug traffickers serve as a deterrent to combat crime.

“The moratorium on drug-related offences means the kingdom is giving more non-violent criminals a second chance,” the president of the government’s Human Rights Commission, Awwad Alawwad, said.

He said the change represents a sign the Saudi justice system is focusing more on rehabilitation and prevention rather than solely on punishment.

According to Human Rights Watch, there were just five executions for drug-related crimes last year in Saudi Arabia, all in January 2020.

Human Rights Watch deputy middle east director Adam Coogle said the decrease in executions is a positive sign, but that the Saudi authorities must also address “the country’s horribly unfair and biased criminal justice system that hands down these sentences.”

“As authorities announce reforms, Saudi prosecutors are still seeking the death penalty for high-profile detainees for nothing more than their peaceful ideas and political affiliations,” he said.

“Saudi Arabia must immediately end all executions and death sentences for non-violent crimes.”

Poland rejects international criticism over LGBT rights

Faith Matters — Mon, 28 Sep 2020 16:13:29 +0000

Polish leaders have rejected suggestions that LGBT people are deprived of any of their rights in the country.

The rejection follows an open letter from 50 ambassadors and international representatives citing a need to work for “non-discrimination, tolerance and mutual acceptance”.

The ambassadors’ appeal comes as an increasingly visible LGBT community in Poland has faced a backlash from the right-wing government, many local communities and the Catholic church.

“Human rights are universal and everyone, including LGBTI persons, are entitled to their full enjoyment,” the letter said, using the acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said he agreed that every person deserves respect but that he completely disagreed with the ambassadors’ claim that LGBT people were being deprived of that.

Mr Morawiecki said at a news conference: “To the dear ambassadors, I can only say that tolerance belongs to Polish DNA. Nobody needs to teach us tolerance, because we are a nation that has learned such tolerance for centuries and we have given many testimonies to the history of such tolerance.”

Some of Poland’s leaders, including the president and MPs from the ruling party, have cast the movement for civil rights for LGBT people as a threat to traditional families. President Andrzej Duda won a second term this summer after calling LGBT rights an “ideology” more dangerous than communism.

Meanwhile, dozens of towns in conservative parts of eastern and southern Poland have passed mostly symbolic resolutions declaring themselves to be free from “LGBT ideology”. Many of the declarations express the view that young people will be demoralised if confronted by the issue.

“Human Rights are not an ideology – they are universal,” US ambassador Georgette Mosbacher tweeted. “50 Ambassadors and Representatives agree.”

Joachim Brudzinski, deputy head of the ruling Law and Justice party who is now a European Parliament member, shot back at Ms Mosbacher on Monday, saying “we in Poland also agree”.

“Therefore, we are waiting with hope for the next letter, this time in defence of murdered Christians, imprisoned #ProLife activists, people dismissed from work and persecuted for quoting the Bible, people subjected to euthanasia against their will,” he wrote on Twitter, along with some other examples of alleged abuse of Christians.

It was not exactly clear what Mr Brudzinski was referring to. Poland is a predominantly Catholic nation where Christians do not face persecution and where abortion is illegal in most cases and euthanasia is outlawed. In one case, however, an IKEA employee in Poland was fired for citing Biblical passages to suggest gay people should be killed. The current government has spoken in the employee’s defence and a state prosecutor is suing the IKEA manager who fired him.

READ: The Changing Face of Hate in Poland: From Antisemitism to Anti-Muslim Racism

Leftist internationalism is at its weakest point

Faith Matters — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 13:53:02 +0000

Sometimes things have to be reread in a different climate and context to be appreciated properly. Disparaging an idea is easy when there isn’t anything intellectually pressing you or requiring some sort of ethical and moral legwork on your beliefs. That also itself involves introspection and the willingness to analyse and identify mistakes.

That is how, as an anti-Stalinist leftist, I view Nick Cohen’s “What’s Left” book. I initially read it as a teenager and found it hard to digest. I regarded it as dressing up imperialism in warm words of internationalist solidarity. The book did not have the imprint it deserved to. As it happens, it didn’t need to. The cannibalism of the left under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour Party has done that.

If you read Cohen’s book you see it as a chilling dark prophecy on what was to come. A foreshadowing of ugly events and behaviours chronicled in an excellent book that explored the ugly heart of left-wing politics in the west. And from it, a morsel of enlightenment can creep upon you, a nagging realisation that there is something profoundly distasteful about the left today in how it views the conflicts of the world.

As we speak, events are uncoiling rapidly in Venezuela. A push to remove the elected dictator Maduro by an opposition leader with considerable democratic legitimacy. It is something fervently supported by thousands of Venezuelans, exhausted with the industrialised levels of poverty and political corruption feeding into the country’s sickly nature. This is surely something the left should support. But many would look at the protesting masses and instead believe they have been whipped up by the CIA, and regard this all as a regime change pushed by America.

The left regards its internationalism simply through the prism of struggling against American imperialism. This is not a new behaviour but one that accelerated after the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003, which seemed to obliterate from history any successful intervention that had ever taken place. America are seen as the unipolar force in the world, the spider at the centre of the corrupt web spinning the chaos of the global free market, pumping American propaganda everywhere. They are to be resisted. This is, in theory, a noble principle to be observed but its ethical collapse comes in the inconsistent application of resistance to dictators and imperialists.

We live in a world of multipolar powers, and one of them includes Russia. The problem with viewing America as the sole cause of suffering is that it reduces other actors on the political scene to reactionary agents, no matter how barbaric they may be. We have seen this repeatedly where high-profile left-wing commentators have absolved Russia for blame in Ukraine or Syria, the latter witnessing a brutal genocide yet receiving limited support. And we have seen it with dictators across countries like Iran, Syria, North Korea, Libya, Cuba and Venezuela where an autocratic leader can generate international sympathy if they pin their grievances on the west.

In Syria this had the double-edged effect of benefiting ISIS who could correctly say to Sunnis terrified of Assad that they were the only shield. In fact, the only time western leftists have protested violence in Syria has been to condemn air strikes on Assad’s murderous facilities. Likewise, in Venezuela they have ignored the terrible spread of poverty only to speak up now as Trump backs regime change.

This is not internationalist solidarity with indigenous people. This is fidelity to their local oppressive structures, to the states rather than people. This is subordinating human rights, democracy and liberty to the sovereignty of the state, all essentially a production of postcolonial guilt whereby leftists felt morally obliged to prevent their countries ever getting involved overseas.

This behaviour ultimately rewards three types of people: the extremists in the Muslim world who can claim they are the only salvation to those being hunted and oppressed by their tyrants. The dictators in their local strongholds who keep hold of power and project themselves as victims of American aggression rather than directly responsible for the suffering of their people. And it benefits Russia, whose quiet yet aggressive imperialist surges across the world continue to go unchecked because too many on the left misunderstand what it means today to be an internationalist.

The problem with this behaviour is that it doesn’t just apply on a global stage but occurs locally too. In Britain, the tendency for the left to get in bed with Islamists over their shared anger towards America has left to the betrayal of liberal Muslims, Muslim feminists and ex-Muslims. The Labour Party is guilty of this, with local branches often accused of seeking Islamist votes and refusing to defend basic principles of liberalism and democracy. It is the culturally relativist left which sees no problem in theocracy and the subjugation of women and homosexuals because it is that of another culture. This is not solidarity, it is not internationalism. The rise in anti-Muslim hate in Britain is truly frightening and signals a dark road ahead for those committed to a more pluralistic and tolerant Britain. But let’s be clear: the threat to pluralism and tolerance doesn’t just come from the white far-right. It also arrives dangerously from Islamists who regard democracy and human rights as false desires, who disregard women’s rights and do not believe in homosexuality. They regard non-Muslims as inferior and would in all likelihood kill apostates. But we have no problem sharing platforms with them in the fight against racism and the Tories. This is not a distant observation but an opinion moulded by discussions and lived experiences.

If you look closely at how the left warmly receives Islamists and ignores liberal Muslims and then how it supports tyrants and not the masses, you realise they believe democracy and freedoms to be too complex for us. We are a simpler people who cannot handle freedoms and need a ruler with an iron fist.

If we want to build a cohesive coalition of support with the democrats, socialists and feminists of the Muslim world and the global south, we cannot only listen to them when their oppressors are backed by the Americans. An Iranian feminist is as valid in her struggle as a Saudi democrat. A Syrian communist is no less legitimate in their protests against their brutal rule than a Palestinian protester determined to end the occupation. Likewise, a liberal Muslim deserves an audience to their struggles against the Islamist as much as they do from a white supremacist.

– Written by Rabbil Sikdar

China: Newspaper blames West for encouraging Xinjiang extremists

Faith Matters — Mon, 03 Sep 2018 10:19:29 +0000

Turbulence in China’s restive far western region of Xinjiang has been caused by “external factors”, a state-run newspaper said Saturday in an editorial responding to calls by a group of U.S. lawmakers for sanctions on Chinese officials.

“Western accusations of Xinjiang governance seriously misled the extremists, making them believe they were launching religious Jihad and won sympathy and support from Western and international society,” said the editorial in the Global Times, a tabloid published by the ruling Communist Party’s People’s Daily.

“Some forces have slandered China’s governing efforts” in Xinjiang, the editorial said, accusing a “West-centred (value) system” of making “empty statements about human rights regardless of the purpose and effect of Xinjiang governance and the grim reality it targets.”

“Such empty talk inspires extremists, which meets the purposes of some Western politicians trying to undermine the governance achievements in Xinjiang and push the region into turmoil,” the editorial said.

Whether Xinjiang governance abuses human rights must be judged by whether its results safeguard the interests of the majority in the region, it continued.

On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers called for sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for human rights abuses against minority Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region, saying it was being turned into a “high-tech police state”.

On Thursday, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular press briefing in Beijing that the United States did “not have the right” to make “unwarranted criticism” of China’s policies toward ethnic minorities.

A United Nations human rights panel this month said it had received many credible reports that 1 million ethnic Uighurs in China were held in what resembled a “massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy.”

China has said that Xinjiang faces a serious threat from Islamist militants and separatists who plot attacks and stir up tensions between the mostly Muslim Uighur minority who call the region home and the ethnic Han Chinese majority.

Hundreds have died in unrest there in recent years.

Pakistan: Critics fear Islamism rise as new minister bans ‘vulgar’ billboards

Faith Matters — Fri, 31 Aug 2018 13:47:23 +0000

Punjab’s new information minister, Islamist politician Fayaz-ul-Hasan Chohan, has announced a ban on “vulgar” movie billboards in the Pakistani province, angering those who fear the growing influence of hardliners under new Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Since Khan’s party appointed him last week, Chohan has caused a number of rows, including with his visit to the grave of a man sentenced to death for killing the governor of Punjab in 2011, and with critical remarks about Nargis, a popular Pakistani singer and actress.

“If any vulgar billboard is found at any cinema in Punjab after three days, there will be a fine in first place, and if any one didn’t comply, that cinema will be shut down,” Chohan told a public meeting in the eastern city of Lahore.

“Is there any humanity that you print half-naked women and put them on big billboards?” he said.

Khan’s election victory in July was helped by strong support from Islamist parties. Chohan joined Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Justice Movement from the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan.

“It’s pure moral policing,” the left-leaning politician and rights activist Ammar Rashid said on Twitter.

China: CCTV cameras and eviction for a ‘house church’ in Beijing

Faith Matters — Fri, 31 Aug 2018 13:39:17 +0000

The Zion Church in Beijing, one of the city’s largest unofficial Protestant “house” churches, has operated with relative freedom for years, hosting hundreds of worshippers every weekend in an expansive, specially renovated hall in north Beijing.

But in April, city authorities asked the church to install 24 closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in the building for “security”, Zion’s head pastor, Jin Mingri, told Reuters.

“They wanted to put cameras in the sanctuary where we worship. The church decided this was not appropriate,” Jin said over tea in his spacious, book-lined office. “Our services are a sacred time.”

When the request was refused, police and state security agents started harassing churchgoers, calling them, visiting them, contacting their workplace and asking them to promise not to go to church, according to statements from the church and interviews with attendees.

China’s constitution guarantees religious freedom, but since President Xi Jinping took office in 2012, Beijing has tightened restrictions on religions seen as a challenge to the authority of the ruling Communist Party.

China’s religious affairs bureau and the public security ministry did not respond to faxed requests for comment.

The Chinese government says greater oversight of religious activities is needed in order to regulate believers and facilitate worship, as well as to prevent foreign forces from influencing China’s internal affairs using the guise of religion.

HOUSE OR OFFICIAL

China’s Christian believers are split between those who attend unofficial “house” or “underground” churches and those who attend government-sanctioned places of worship.

The unofficial establishments, which range from small living room-gatherings to large, professional operations like Zion, had in recent decades been tolerated by authorities.

They were often able to rent large spaces, though these are rarely identifiable from the outside. The only church exteriors in China adorned with steeples or crosses are officially sanctioned.

In February, new legislation increased oversight of religious education and practice, with harsher punishment for practices not sanctioned by the authorities.

In addition to being asked to install security cameras, some unofficial churches have been asked by police to take detailed lists of attendee IDs and phone numbers, churchgoers and activists say.

Some who push back have been visited by police and asked to switch places of worship to officially sanctioned churches, they added.

The Zion church, which occupies an office building floor that was previously a nightclub, is now being evicted despite previous verbal assurances from its landlord that it could rent the location until 2023, Jin said. The landlord could not be reached for comment.

Jin does not expect to be able to find a landlord that would rent the church another suitable location.

RARE PROTEST

There are roughly 60 million Christians in China, most of them Protestant, with about 10 million Catholics, according to independent estimates.

The Vatican and Beijing are locked in talks to resolve a decades-long dispute over appointing bishops in China that, if resolved, could make underground Catholic churches official, with Holy See-approved bishops.

On July 23, more than 30 of Beijing’s hundreds of underground Protestant churches took the rare step of releasing a joint statement complaining of “unceasing interference” and the “assault and obstruction” of regular activities of believers since the new regulations came into effect, according to a copy of the statement seen by Reuters and confirmed by Jin.

“We call on the government to respect history and the current situation of house churches, respect the means and practices of religious work, and respect citizens’ basic freedoms and rights to believe,” the letter said.

Wang Yu, a prominent rights lawyer who has defended Christians from harassment and was recently baptised at Zion after years of worship there, said she believes the pressure on believers is an attempt to force the church to close.

“The authorities hope numbers will dwindle till it becomes impossible to continue, but in recent months ever-more churchgoers have been attending service,” she said.

Wang fears, however, the situation will worsen, given the authorities have started describing the church as a “cult” when pressuring churchgoers. In one of its statements, Zion also says authorities have called the church a cult.

“Being labelled a cult was how it all started for the Falun Gong in 1999,” Wang said, referring to the spiritual movement the Communist Party banned that year.

The new regulations have increased government pressure on the churches to “sinicize” – to be culturally Chinese and submit to oversight from the Communist Party – but many have resisted, saying this would be a fundamental betrayal of their faith.

“House churches believe that our spiritual needs and the content of our faith is ruled over by God,” Pastor Jin said.

“What we need is the freedom to believe. Without this, it is not real faith.”

UK: Foreign minister attacks Google over ‘child abuse content’

Faith Matters — Fri, 31 Aug 2018 13:32:16 +0000

British foreign minister Jeremy Hunt accused Google on Thursday of abandoning its moral values by failing to remove child abuse content while launching a version of its search engine in China that will block some websites.

The British government has repeatedly criticized online platforms such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook for failing to remove abusive material or sexual content posted online even after they were notified.

“Seems extraordinary that Google is considering censoring its content to get into China but won’t cooperate with UK, US … in removing child abuse content,” Hunt said on Twitter. “They used to be so proud of being values-driven.”

Alphabet’s Google plans a search engine in China that will block some search terms and websites, two sources told Reuters earlier this month, in a move that could mark its return to a market it abandoned eight years ago on censorship concerns.

Google said in a statement they agreed with Hunt that child sexual abuse was “abhorrent and must be removed, that’s why we co-operate with governments to fight child sexual abuse online”.

Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand invited major technology companies to attend a meeting on tackling child abuse and extremism on their websites, but the firms declined to attend, the Daily Mail reported on Thursday.

Google said they did offer to send an executive to the conference.

In January, Prime Minister Theresa May used an address at the World Economic Forum in Davos to say investors should use their financial power to force internet firms into taking more responsibility for stopping militants and paedophiles using their platforms.

Google, which quit China’s search engine market in 2010, has been actively seeking ways to re-enter China where many of its products are blocked by regulators.

Leading human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have urged Google not to bow to censorship demands in China because by doing so, they allege, the company would be complicit in the repression of freedom of speech.

Search terms about human rights, democracy, religion and peaceful protests will be among the words blacklisted in the search engine app, which The Intercept website said had already been demonstrated to the Chinese government.

The project, code-named “Dragonfly”, has been under way since the spring of 2017, the news website said.

U.N.: Social media must clamp down on hate speech

Faith Matters — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 10:03:23 +0000

Social media, including Facebook, must proactively block content inciting hatred and prevent online campaigns which target minorities, such as those undertaken in Myanmar, the United Nations human rights chief said on Wednesday.

Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, was speaking after U.N. experts accused Myanmar generals of “genocidal intent” and said Facebook had allowed its platform to be used to incite violence against Rohingya.

Facebook said on Monday it was removing several Myanmar military officials from the social media website and an Instagram account to prevent the spread of “hate and misinformation” after reviewing the content.

Zeid, whose spokesman said he has met with major tech companies in Silicon Valley, including Facebook and Google, in recent months, was speaking to a news conference before his four-year term ends on Aug. 31.

Zeid said he didn’t feel Facebook took the issue seriously at first but that the company’s attitude began to change after Yanghee Lee, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, told a Geneva press conference in March that Facebook was being used in the country to spread hate speech.

“But it shouldn’t be because the press or the human rights community highlights the problem for them then suddenly to respond. They should be aware of it ahead of time,” he said.

“So I don’t think they should wait until the crisis begins. They should be thinking proactively about what steps they will take to mitigate that,” he added.

Facebook said on Monday that while it was too slow to act in the case of Myanmar, it was now making progress, with better technology to identify hate speech and improved reporting tools.

However, Zeid said there was a danger that social media could be over-regulated in a way that breaches human rights law including the right to freedom of expression.

Tech giants should “keep the broadest space available and open to the exercise of freedom of expression”, relying on international human rights law for regulation, he said.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday accused Google’s search engine of promoting negative news articles and hiding “fair media” coverage of him, vowing to address the situation without providing evidence or giving details of action he might take.

Trump’s attack against the Alphabet Inc. unit follows a string of grievances against technology companies, including Twitter Inc and Facebook, which he has accused of silencing conservative voices.