'Unseen' News and Views – By Baher Kamal & The Like
Pacific Islanders depend on coastal fisheries for food and commercial livelihoods. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS
(UN News)* — The world must be made a safer place for people working to protect the planet, who sometimes pay with their own lives for their activism, UN Human Rights High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet said on Tuesday [1 March 2022].
“Protecting the environment goes hand-in-hand with protecting the rights of those who defend it,”she told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, which is holding its annual month-long session.
Dangers of speaking out
Ms. Bachelet revealed how speaking out and standing up for environmental rights can come at enormous cost as activists have been killed or subjected to abuse, threats and harassment.
(UN News)* — Shocking abuses against indigenous Papuans have been taking place in Indonesia, UN-appointed rights experts said on Tuesday [1 March 2022], citing child killings, disappearances, torture and enforced mass displacement.
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“Between April and November 2021, we have received allegations indicating several instances of extrajudicial killings, including of young children, enforced disappearance, torture and inhuman treatment and the forced displacement of at least 5,000 indigenous Papuans by security forces,” the three independent experts said in a statement.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 