Chuyên mục: Civil rights – Quyền dân sự

Beijing is currently pushing a rule-of-law campaign, but the reality is drastically different

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

HONG KONG-CHINA-POLITICS-RIGHTS

Philippe Lopez—AFP/Getty Images Protesters holding pictures of detained Chinese human-rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang march to the Chinese Liaison Office in Hong Kong on May 14, 2014, asking for his release

Time.com – In late November, Ren Jianyu, once a budding civil servant in China’s southwest, received his results for China’s National Judicial Examination: a sterling score well above what he needed to pass China’s bar. The triumph was bittersweet: for 15 months, Ren, like tens of thousands of others, had been forced to undergo “re-education through labor,” as time spent in China’s gulags is known.Ren’s offense was to have reposted on his microblog comments critical of China’s government and its leaders. He also purchased online a T-shirt emblazoned with the motto: “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death.” For these transgressions, the now 28-year-old was never given the courtesy of a proper trial. He spent his days assembling cardboard for boxes and lived 11 people to a room in a camp filled with more than 1,000 inmates. But after a local justice board deemed his case improperly handled, Ren was released early in 2012 and later compensated less than $15,000 for his suffering. “After experiencing so many things all these years,” he says, “I am not afraid anymore.”

Despite — or perhaps because of — this injustice, Ren decided that he needed to familiarize himself with China’s legal system. After he was released, families of other legal victims came to him, asking for counsel. “At the time, I didn’t understand the law,” says Ren. “When I read the piles of materials they showed to me, I didn’t know which parts were useful, which were not.” Tiếp tục đọc “Beijing is currently pushing a rule-of-law campaign, but the reality is drastically different” →

Civil Society Organisations and Internet Governance in Asia – Open Review

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

cis-india – This is a book section written for the third volume (2000-2010) of the Asia Internet History series edited by Prof. Kilnam Chon. The pre-publication text of the section is being shared here to invite suggestions for addition and modification. Please share your comments via email sent to raw[at]cis-india[dot]org with ‘Civil Society Organisations and Internet Governance in Asia – Comments’ as the subject line. This text is published under Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.

You are most welcome to read the pre-publication drafts of other sections of the Asia Internet History Vol. 3, and share your comments: https://sites.google.com/site/internethistoryasia/book3.

Preparations for the World Summit on the Information Society

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) conferences organized by the United Nations in Geneva (2003) and Tunis (2005) initiated crucial platforms and networks, some temporary and some continued, for various non-governmental actors to intensively and periodically take part in the discussions of governance of Internet and various related activities towards the goals of inclusive development and human rights. Many of the civil society organizations taking part in the WSIS conferences, as well as the various regional and thematic preparatory meetings and seminars, had little prior experience in the topic of Internet governance. They were entering these conversations from various perspectives, such as local developmental interventions, human and cultural rights activism, freedom and diversity of media, and gender and social justice. With backgrounds in such forms of applied practice and theoretical frameworks, members of these civil society organizations often faced a difficult challenge in articulating their experiences, insights, positions, and suggestions in terms of the (then) emerging global discourse of Internet governance and that of information and communication technologies (ICTs) as instruments of development. At the WSIS: An Asian Response Meeting in 2002, Susanna George, (then) Executive Director of Isis International, Manila, succinctly expressed this challenge being faced by the members of civil society organizations:

For some feminist activists however, including myself, it has felt like trying to squeeze my concerns into a narrow definition of what gender concerns in ICTs are. I would like it to Cinderella’s ugly sister cutting off her toe to fit into the dainty slipper of gender concerns in ICTs. The development ball, it seems, can only accommodate some elements of what NGO activists, particularly those from the South, are concerned about in relation to new information and communications technologies. (George 2002)

Tiếp tục đọc “Civil Society Organisations and Internet Governance in Asia – Open Review” →

LandMark: Protecting Indigenous and Community Lands by Making Them Visible

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

WRI – Up to 65 percent of the world’s land is held by Indigenous Peoples and communities, yet only 10 percent is legally recognized as belonging to them. The rest, held under customary tenure arrangements, is largely unmapped, not formally demarcated, and therefore invisible to the world. Without strong legal protections or concrete maps delineating their territories, communities are vulnerable to losing their land to governments and investors for economic and commercial development.

That’s where LandMark comes in. Launched today, LandMark is the first online, interactive global platform to provide maps and other critical information on lands that are held and used by Indigenous Peoples and communities. The platform aims to raise awareness, engage audiences, and help these people protect their land rights. Shining a light on indigenous and community land reduces the likelihood that irregular acquisitions and expropriations go unnoticed, and helps protect the livelihoods and well-being of billions of rural people.

1) Indigenous and Community Land Is Not “Vacant” Land.

Tiếp tục đọc “LandMark: Protecting Indigenous and Community Lands by Making Them Visible” →

Countdown: District Has 30 Days to Change Transgender Student Locker Room Policy or Lose Federal Funds

~ Trần Đình Hoành ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

TĐH: Vietnam will face this issue eventually

Katrina Trinko / / November 03, 2015/

Should transgender students have full access to locker rooms? (Photo: Ed Sacckett/KRT/Newscom)

Uncle Sam isn’t going to let schools place certain restrictions on how transgender students use a single-sex locker room.

A school district near Chicago, Palatine 211, provides numerous accommodations for transgender students. The district calls the students by requested names, honors selected gender (including allowing them to play on the sports teams of the gender they identify as belonging to), and permits them to use single-sex bathrooms, since stalls ensure privacy. Tiếp tục đọc “Countdown: District Has 30 Days to Change Transgender Student Locker Room Policy or Lose Federal Funds” →