Human Rights Abuses

By Nicholas Bequelin, Regional Director at Amnesty International

Mesut Ozil’s social media post about the political situation in Xinjiang has prompted an angry response from the Chinese authorities. The Arsenal footballer’s accusation that China is persecuting the predominantly Muslim Uyghur minority has been dismissed by Beijing as “fake news”. Meanwhile, a Gunners match was pulled from the state TV schedule and Chinese football fans have reportedly burned Arsenal shirts in protest at the player’s comments.

Amnesty International has extensively documented the situation in Xinjiang over the past several years. We have interviewed more than 400 people outside of China whose relatives in Xinjiang are still missing, as well as individuals who said they were tortured while in detention camps there. We also collected satellite photos of the camps and analysed official Chinese documents that detail the mass-internment programme. This is what is really happening:

It has long been recognized that the Canadian justice system is fraught with racism that disproportionately impacts Black people and communities across the country, resulting in racial profiling, harsher sentencing, mistreatment in prison, denial of services, and other injustices which can be compounded for people with intersecting identities (e.g. Black Muslims, Black LGBTQ2S folks, etc.)The way that racism is institutionalized in the justice system, as well as in broader society, is connected to Canada’s long, sordid legacy of perpetrating anti-Black racism throughout history with enslavement, exclusionary immigration, and more. 

If the last couple weeks have shown us anything, it’s that now, more than ever, we need the human courage to stand up for what is right. We need the bravery to speak out, to support threatened communities, to build a society based on equality, compassion and unity.

It’s been inspiring to see how many people have channelled their love and hope towards our grieving Muslim whānau these past weeks. New Zealanders have flatly rejected the Christchurch gunman’s hate-filled ideology. But as powerful as this national outpouring of solidarity has been, it’s not enough on its own.

Christchurch did not happen in a vacuum. The atrocity was at least partly the result of a creeping normalisation of white supremacist ideology and the rise of openly Islamophobic world leaders, a devastating reminder that bigotry still simmers below the surface. If we’re serious about solidarity, we need to redouble our efforts to challenge racism and bigotry wherever we see them. Here are some steps you can take:

Listen to people who experience racism

By: Nazila Nik

On June 5, web programmer Saeed Malekpour will turn 43 behind bars in Iran. This will be the 10th birthday he has spent in Evin Prison. He was 33 when arrested and has now spent almost a decade in prison.  Almost a decade. Let it sink in for a minute: A decade without even a single day of furlough.

Saeed Malekpour was an ordinary immigrant in Canada. He came here, just like thousands of others. Just like me.

In 2008 he was a permanent resident of Canada, in the prime of his life, with a seemingly bright future in front of him. Then he went back to Iran to see his dying father. It was not the first time that he had travelled back to Iran. But this time, unlike others, he was arrested on street and taken for questioning. That was the beginning of a surreal nightmare that still haunts Saeed and his family a decade later.

ore than 4.8 million Syrian refugees are in just five countries Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt: