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Amnesty International Canada is deeply concerned with and strongly opposes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to “annex” a large portion of the West Bank in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

In the upcoming weeks, Israel is expected to “annex” at least 30% of the West Bank.

In May 2020, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his plan to “annex” parts of the Jordan Valley, namely the City of Jericho. It is expected that at least 60,000 Palestinians will be forced to leave their homes. Prime Minister Netanyahu has also announced that the displaced Palestinians would not be granted Israeli citizenship.

Israel’s “annexation” plans follow the January 2020 announcement by President Donald Trump’s so-called “deal of the century”, which proposed areas of the occupied West Bank to be annexed by Israel.

Good News comes from New Zealand, after Behrouz Boochani, Kurdish journalist from Iran who fled persecution and attempted to seek safety in Australia, has finally been granted asylum after six agonizing years in Australia’s offshore detention centres on Manus Island (Papua New Guinea), beginning in 2013.

His detention was the result of the Australian government’s cruel and unlawful asylum policies, which involved sending thousands of asylum seekers to Pacific Island nations of Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Nauru. Amnesty International’s research found that the conditions for people trapped in these centres amounts to torture under international law.

Behrouz gained a reputation as a journalist and human rights defender by talking about violations in the press and social media throughout his ordeal. He published over 100 news articles from detention, including his autobiographical book, No Friend But The Mountains, published in July 2018 while he remained detained.

My very first introduction to Amnesty International began with questions about the death penalty. In November 2010, Aasia Noreen, a Christian woman from Pakistan, was convicted for blasphemy and sentenced to death. Reading Amnesty's 2011 report on the case gave voice to a reaction I did not have the language for yet. It echoed what I had assumed every human would naturally believe: that the death penalty breaches human rights, the right to life and the right to live free from torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. The case opened my eyes to the many injustice structures that led to her sentence: the prevalent dangers of caste systems, religious persecution, and gender violence.

On 30 June, China’s top legislature unanimously passed a new national security law for Hong Kong that entered into force in the territory the same day, just before midnight. The law is dangerously vague and broad: virtually anything could be deemed a threat to “national security" under its provisions, and it can apply to anyone on the planet.

The Chinese authorities forced the law through without any accountability or transparency: it was passed just weeks after it was first announced, bypassing Hong Kong’s local legislature, and the text was kept secret from the public and allegedly even the Hong Kong government until after it was enacted.

Here are 10 reasons why everyone should be worried about this new law: