Belgium is showing the way on the #Gaza crisis.

✅ Condemned 7/10 killings by Palestinian armed groups;

✅ Questioned legality of some Israeli airstrikes;

✅ Condemned Israel's collective punishment of Palestinians & called for targeted sanctions on those responsible;

1/n Belgium has also:

✅ Expressed support for the International Criminal Court’s role and its ongoing investigation on the situation in Palestine, which includes jurisdiction over the current hostilities between the Israeli government and Palestinian armed groups.

2/n

Convincing people that they have fundamental rights takes no effort at all.

Convincing them that others have fundamental rights is the hard part. I want to write about these things in ways that might encourage new people to warm to the idea of universal human rights.

I don’t feel you can do that by using language and tropes that immediately spark “culture war” reactions - those cliché phrases that close minds instantly.

Dans l'après-midi du 2 octobre 2018, l'éminent journaliste #saoudien et chroniqueur du Washington Post Jamal Khashoggi s'est rendu au consulat saoudien d'Istanbul pour obtenir les documents nécessaires pour son mariage. C'est la dernière fois que sa fiancée l'a vu. Des agents saoudiens l’ont assassiné à l'intérieur du consulat et ont découpé son corps en morceaux.

1️⃣ From my Daily Brief last week - Monday:

The EU’s illegal and immoral border policies prioritize suffering: hrw.org/the-day-in-hum…

Audio: hrw.org/video-photos/a…

En français: hrw.org/fr/news/2023/0… 2️⃣ From my Daily Brief last week - Tuesday:

US state lawmakers pushing for MORE child labor: hrw.org/the-day-in-hum…

Audio: hrw.org/video-photos/a…

En français: hrw.org/fr/news/2023/0…

Mass drownings at sea are to the EU what mass shootings are to the US.

It keeps happening.

And every time it happens, politicians pretend to be concerned, yet keep in place the government policies at the root of the problem.

So, people keep dying.
hrw.org/the-day-in-hum…

https://twitter.com/HRW_NL/status/1669966712672866304

What can be done?

Start with official, proactive search and rescue at sea.

Some EU states have drastically reduced search-and-rescue capacity at sea, and even restricted private groups from doing it.

Read more: hrw.org/news/2023/06/1…

Mass deaths at sea are to the EU what mass shootings are to the US.

- It keeps happening.

- And every time, politicians pretend to be concerned.

- And every time, politicians keep in place the government policies at the root of the problem.

- And it keeps happening. See also:

https://twitter.com/evegeddie/status/1669047236636860426

Tomorrow marks 18 years since #Uzbekistan’s security forces massacred hundreds of mostly peaceful protesters in the city of #Andijan.

Afterwards, the authorities relentlessly persecuted anyone suspected of having ties to the protest or asking questions about the slaughter. No one was ever prosecuted for the killings.

No independent international investigation was ever allowed.

Although the then president of #Uzbekistan is gone, many in office in 2005 remain in powerful positions today.

In fact, the then prime minister is now president.

Musk says Twitter is now worth less than half of what he bought it for…

Great going, chief. Keep it coming with those bright ideas. 🙄 nytimes.com/2023/03/26/tec… ❓❓❓❓❓❓
TWITTER POLL: What is Musk doing to Twitter?

A) He has a great plan to improve Twitter, and his critics just can't see it.

B) He bought it on a whim and doesn't really have a clue what he's doing.

C) He's intentionally trying to destroy it.

👍 yes!! 👍 ICC judges issue arrest warrants against Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova Read more about how Russia has been abducting countless numbers of children from occupied areas of #Ukraine – “a whirlwind of horror and illegality”: hrw.org/the-day-in-hum…

FRIDAY TWITTER POLL...

What’s more annoying?

People wrongly using the word "America" to refer to the US?

Or people wrongly using the word "Europe" to refer to the EU? (and I admit to having made both these mistakes on more than one occasion... 😬)

What's interesting about this article - perhaps telling - is that it makes zero effort to even try to explain what the European Convention on Human Rights is. No explanation whatsoever.

https://twitter.com/TelePolitics/status/1636275299565305856

I don't imagine the Telegraph is leaving it out because they assume all their readers already have a comprehensive understanding of the European Convention on Human Rights.

No, I'm guessing they - like the government - want the bogeyman word "European" to do all the talking.

Meet Max Butkevych, a prominent rights defender & journalist in #Ukraine. Last year, he joined the military.

The joke “Supreme Court” of the bogus “Luhansk People’s Republic” (Russian-occupied territory) gave him 13 years’ imprisonment on fake charges.
hrw.org/news/2023/03/1… Russian military investigators built the bogus case against Butkeyvich. Russian authorities published a video of him in which his face looks swollen and the flesh around his eyes is dark and puffy. He stares into space & repeats what his Russian torturers told him to say.

1️⃣ Most importantly: what @GaryLineker said about the UK government’s anti-asylum policy is true.

2️⃣ Even if it weren’t, he shouldn’t be punished for it. You don’t lose your right to speak your conscience because you present a sports show.

https://twitter.com/GaryLineker/status/1633111662352891908

3️⃣ Everyone should speak out against the increasing attacks on this vulnerable minority, or the attacks will only get worse. Those with greater influence have an even greater moral obligation to do so.

#Bahrain has revoked entry visas it had earlier issued to 2 Human Rights Watch staff to attend the 146th Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Assembly.

HRW holds permanent observer status with the IPU, granting us access to its Assemblies. hrw.org/news/2023/03/1… Bahrain is hosting the meeting of the IPU, a global organization of national parliaments, from March 11-15. The organization’s slogan is “For democracy. For everyone.” The theme of the 146th Assembly is “Promoting peaceful coexistence & inclusive societies: Fighting intolerance.”

The EU's support of the Libyan coast guard already results in people being sent back to Libya, where many are tortured.

EU leaders know this. They have been complicit in torture.

Now, EU leaders want to double down on this morally repugnant policy.

euobserver.com/migration/1568… Not to mention the fact that they are using the latest deadly disaster as a justification for doubling down on their complicity in torture in Libya...

...when that latest disaster was a boat from Turkey: hrw.org/the-day-in-hum…

The Holocaust did not begin with mass murder. That's where it ended up.

➡️ Genocides & other mass atrocity crimes start with words - specifically, with powerful people dehumanizing a minority.

➡️ Once they are seen as less than human, anything is possible, even mass murder. Why do politicians so often attack refugees & migrants?

Because it's easy to play on public xenophobia? Some of that, sure.

But much also has to do with them being a target that can't fight back: generally poor, vulnerable, with no power in society. Not even a vote.

I understand people who want politicians to make everyone’s lives better. I understand people who just want politicians to make their life better.

But what I don’t understand is people who support politicians who openly aim to make some group of people’s lives worse. How do they think that helps them?

Complicity in torture: hrw.org/news/2023/02/0…

Letting children die at sea: hrw.org/the-day-in-hum…

⚠️ These are deliberate policy choices by the EU. They have deliberated.

They know the consequences of their policy choices include people being tortured and kids dying horrifically.

They simply do not care.

They have lost their morality, abandoned their humanity, and rejected the founding human rights values of the EU.

A Bismarck tower in the background, an unidentified war grave in the foreground. Aachen, Germany. There were some 240 such towers built around Germany honoring the chancellor who died in 1898: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismarck_…

This one in Aachen was later surrounded with the graves of people killed in the two World Wars.

You receive terrible news: someone in your family has just been shot dead while allegedly committing a violent crime.

Then you learn that, in response to your relative’s reported crime, the authorities are coming to demolish your home...

👉 What would you think?

🧵 You’d think: that doesn’t make any sense. Why are they punishing me and the rest of the family for something I had nothing to do with? Something someone else did?

You’d think: that’s wrong, it should be illegal.

And you’d be right. It is illegal.

So, imagine you’re a government that Human Rights Watch just wrote a report about...

We ask you to investigate possible violations of international humanitarian law.

➡️ What would you do?

A 🧵 on two options, with examples from Russia's invasion of #Ukraine... You could, like some governments do, deny everything, reject our findings, attack our meticulous research, invent conspiracy theories, lob insults at our staff… anything to try to deflect attention from the issue.

Or...