Tag - human-rights

 
 

HUMAN RIGHTS

Chinese residents living in Japan take part in a “white paper” protest in solidarity against China's COVID-19 lockdowns, in Tokyo in November 2022.
JAPAN
Oct 10, 2024
Chinese nationals in Japan testify to harassment by Beijing, report says
One man said Chinese police had used his relatives to try and lure him back to the country.
Hideko Hakamata (left), the older sister of ex-boxer Iwao Hakamata, and Hideyo Ogawa, an attorney on his defense team, speak at a news conference on Tuesday in the city of Shizuoka, following prosecutors' decision not to file an appeal against the Shizuoka District Court's not-guilty verdict in a retrial of a 1966 murder case against Iwao Hakamata.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Oct 9, 2024
Japan’s ‘hostage justice’ system breeds false convictions, groups say
False convictions will continue to occur unless the system of extracting confessions through prolonged, harsh interrogations is eliminated, human rights groups say.
A victim of forced sterilization (second from right) reacts Tuesday as the Upper House unanimously passed a bill into law to compensate victims of the practice.
JAPAN / Society
Oct 9, 2024
Informing forced sterilization victims of new law remains challenge
Some victims said that they did not want to remember the sterilizations, and others said that they had not told their families about their past.
A bill to grant compensation to victims of forced sterilization clears the Lower House on Monday.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Oct 8, 2024
Parliament clears bill to compensate all victims of forced sterilization
With the latest legislation, all victims — whether or not they are plaintiffs in related lawsuits — will be compensated, paving the way for resolution.
A protest against the Taliban’s decision to cancel the return of high school-aged girls to school in Kabul in 2022. Women and girls are banned from education in Afghanistan beyond the sixth grade.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Oct 4, 2024
Japan shouldn’t work with the Taliban, not even to build schools
Japan's development aid to Afghanistan strengthens the Taliban. Instead, Tokyo should support those, like exiled Afghans, who defend democracy and human rights.
Japan's new justice minister Hideki Makihara says abolishing the death penalty would be "inappropriate."
JAPAN / Politics
Oct 3, 2024
New justice minister says scrapping death penalty 'inappropriate'
Capital punishment has strong public support in Japan, where scrapping it is rarely discussed.
Journalists Konstantin Gabov (far left), Antonina Favorskaya (center left), Artem Kriger (center right) and Sergei Karelin, accused of taking part in the activities of an "extremist" organization founded by late opposition politician Alexei Navalny, stand inside an enclosure for defendants before a court hearing in Moscow on Wednesday.
WORLD / Politics
Oct 3, 2024
Russia tries four journalists for links to Navalny team
The cases highlight the increasingly precarious position of journalists inside Russia.
Justice Minister Ryuji Koizumi speaks to reporters in Tokyo on Friday. Koizumi stressed that the granting of the special residency permits to children subjected to deportation orders was a one-time measure.
JAPAN / Politics
Sep 27, 2024
Japan fine-tunes issuance of humanitarian visas
The move comes amid a near-tripling of technical intern trainees from Myanmar going missing from their programs in 2023.
Myanmar's then-state counselor, Aung San Suu Kyi, meets with Fumio Kishida, Japan's then-foreign minister, for talks in Tokyo in November 2016.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Sep 27, 2024
Kishida’s failure to support democracy in Myanmar
Kishida's lack of engagement with Myanmar's pro-democracy movement shows he prioritized economic relations over democratic values.
Russian airstrikes on Ukrainian cities have been unsuccessful in breaking Ukraine's resolve and the strategic benefit of such attacks is questionable.
COMMENTARY / World / Geoeconomic Briefing
Sep 26, 2024
Lessons from Ukraine and Gaza on humanitarian law
The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza challenge, if not outright violate, humanitarian law, which seeks to balance military objectives with minimizing harm to civilians.
Chung Pui-kuen, former chief editor of the now-shuttered Stand News, and Patrick Lam, former acting chief editor, leave the Hong Kong District Court on June 27, 2023.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Sep 26, 2024
Hong Kong court to sentence two former editors found guilty of sedition in landmark case
The case marks the first time journalists have been found guilty of sedition since the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China in 1997.
Choi Min-kyong (right), a North Korean defector who said she was deported by China four times before making it to South Korea in 2012, and Shin Ju-ye (left), who fled North Korea in the 1990s and settled in China before defecting to South Korea last year, speak during an interview in Seoul on July 19.
ASIA PACIFIC
Sep 25, 2024
China cracks down on North Korean defectors with biometric surveillance
Facial-recognition cameras now monitor China's border with North Korea, documents show, while police have collected biometric data of North Koreans in the country.
Iwao Hakamata in March 2023 in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture. Hakamata was convicted in 1968 over the fatal stabbings of a couple and their children two years earlier. He has pleaded his innocence throughout his trial, maintaining that his confession was coerced.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Sep 25, 2024
In Japan, the road to exoneration takes decades
Defense lawyers’ extremely limited access to evidence and prosecutors’ right to appeal a court order for a retrial result in a long, drawn-out process.
A woman walks in front of the Kremlin's Spasskaya tower (left) and St. Basil's cathedral in downtown Moscow on Monday.
WORLD / Society
Sep 25, 2024
Russia takes aim at those without children — while sending young men to war
Proposals to ban "the ideology of childlessness" resemble legislation passed more than a decade ago that banned "propaganda" about LGBTQ relationships.
Fluminense and Al Ahly players line up prior to a FIFA Club World Cup match in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, last year
SOCCER
Sep 25, 2024
LGBTQ fans welcome in Saudi Arabia, 2034 World Cup bid chief says
In August, Amnesty International said Saudi Arabia failed to meet FIFA’s own human rights requirements in their bid for the World Cup.
Masahiko Uotani (third from left), head of Keidanren's diversity promotion committee, hands its proposal on a separate surname system for married couples to members of a lawmaker group focused on realizing such a system, in June.
JAPAN / FOCUS
Sep 24, 2024
Japan's top business lobby group pushes for separate surnames option
In response to Keidanren's push, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party held internal discussions on the issue for the first time in about three years.
Migrant workers and union members hold a demonstration in favor of fair working conditions in the Made in Italy supply chain, in Geneva on Sept. 11.
BUSINESS
Sep 19, 2024
How migrant workers suffer to craft the 'Made in Italy' luxury label
Brands rely on a chain of contractors and subcontractors, with checks on conditions and the treatment of workers virtually nonexistent.
An Israeli naval officer holds the mooring rope of INS Tanin, a German-built Dolphin AIP class submarine, as it docks at a naval base in the northern city of Haifa after its arrival in Israel in 2014.
WORLD / Politics
Sep 19, 2024
Germany has stopped approving war weapons exports to Israel, source says
Legal challenges across Europe have led other allies of Israel to pause or suspend arms exports.
Liberal Democratic Party presidential election candidates after a campaign event in Nagoya on Saturday
JAPAN / Politics / FOCUS
Sep 18, 2024
LDP leader candidates split on separate surnames for married couples
While party conservatives worry about damaging family unity, others say it’s time to push through a legislative change.
President Masoud Pezeshkian takes questions during his first news conference in Tehran on Monday.
WORLD
Sep 17, 2024
Iran president pledges to stop morality police confronting women
The death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in 2022, days after the morality police arrested her for an alleged breach of dress code, triggered monthslong protests.

Longform

Dul Saroth (left) and Soeum Samrach, deminers with the Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority, practice using the Advanced Landmine Imaging System in Cambodia’s Siem Reap province in August.
The Japanese tech that could one day make Southeast Asia landmine-free